


Devil May Care

by xnemone



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, M/M, in which the uchihas got screwed over and itachi decided not to be a dick, instead of being left to his own devices in a village that hates him, naruto is also taken in by jiraiya, team seven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-07-20 14:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 22,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19993825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xnemone/pseuds/xnemone
Summary: In a world where the Uchiha name is one soaked in blood and the fourth hokage’s son was rumored to be dead, two children were taken from the only home they had ever had. One lived with his brother, the two of them traveling as the older worked as a nameless shinobi for hire, sometimes on less than moral missions. The other travelled with an old man, an author, doing odd jobs here and there to afford a few nights a week at an inn. When they meet and decide to return to the village they both might have called home, they realize that family isn’t always who you’re born with.





	1. How to Make Friends in Impossible Circumstances (by Sasuke Uchiha)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, first off, I want to make it perfectly clear this fic is designed to fix what canon fucked up. That includes making Sakura stronger and more driven and generally a more valuable member of team seven. It also includes giving both Sasuke and Naruto a family to rely on, including each other. I also made Naruto and his relationships with other characters different in the ways I thought growing up in a supportive, loving environment away from the village would have caused. I don't approve of Itachi's actions in canon and believe he could have been a much more well-rounded character if he were shown actually following through on his claims in a reasonable way, so I tried to portray him better.
> 
> If you waste my time with a complaint about what I just listed, my great grandmother will begin physically manifesting in your home to tell you that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
> 
> With that, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy.

There is a boy in the hot spring. Sasuke wouldn’t bat an eyelash at him if the boy weren’t sitting perfectly still, eyes closed and legs crossed, on the surface of the water.

Sasuke blinks.

The boy has blond hair and strange scars on his cheeks that look like whiskers. His hair looks soft and his features rough, for a kid his age. He couldn’t be older than Sasuke, but the concentrated frown on his features is too old for his face. He has a spiral tattoo―no, a seal on his abdomen, and a damp white towel across his lap. He’s chubby, too, but Sasuke suspects that if he’s a shinobi, most of that is muscle.

Then Sasuke notices he’s staring back at him with wide, blue eyes.

Sasuke almost jumps.

“Who are you?”

The boy’s tone is calm and curious. There is no hint of the judgemental scorn of an arrogant shinobi or the reverent fear of a powerless civilian. He seems to be genuinely wondering as if Sasuke and his brother aren’t two of the most notorious shinobi in the world by right of name alone.

“Sasuke,” Sasuke answers in surprise. “Who are you?”

The boy smiles, and there’s no hint of malice or anxiety in it. Then he uncrosses his legs and slips into the water as though off an edge, and Sasuke _knows_ how much chakra control that must take. How long as this boy been sitting there, anyway?

“My name’s Naruto, ya know,” the boy introduces with a brilliant grin that looks like the sun.

Sasuke exhales just to regain his usual calm and walks into the water. Naruto keeps smiling at him, submerged up to his shoulders. Sasuke watches him out of the corner of his eye. He’s a shinobi; there’s no doubt there. But Sasuke can’t place him to any particular village. If anything, he might be from Konoha but if that were the case, Sasuke would recognize him. They would have been classmates, before Sasuke and his brother left.

Could he be a traveler too?

“Where are you from?” Sasuke asks, sitting down across the small pool from the boy.

Naruto hums with a thoughtful frown before he smiles again and gives his answer. “Nowhere!” he exclaims happily, beaming. Then he looks down with another frown as he continues, “I guess my parents were from Konoha, but I’ve never been inside the village before. My godfather raised me, and he says I’ll learn more about being a shinobi outside the village than in it, ya know? What about you?”

Sasuke finds those wide blue eyes fixed on him again and is amazed again that this boy doesn’t recognize him when half the shinobi world knows his name.

“Konoha.” Sasuke narrows his eyes. He decides to test how far he can go before Naruto recognizes him. “My brother and I escaped when I was six.”

Naruto blinks. “Escaped?”

Sasuke raises his eyebrows and says, “That’s right. We were attacked in the night. My whole clan was killed, but my brother and I managed to escape.”

“Oh!” Naruto’s eyes widen even further. “That’s awful. Were they shinobi?”

Sasuke almost laughs. “Yes,” he replies with a nod, carefully maintaining his impassive expression. “We were known for our fire and shuriken techniques.”

Naruto blinks, and for a second Sasuke thinks he might get it. Then Naruto asks another question.

“Why were you attacked?”

“We wanted change. My family was planning a coup after being subjugated for generations, so Danzo, the head of Konoha’s ANBU, acted preemptively. My brother found out and tried to convince our parents to leave with us, but they refused and died fighting.”

That’s enough information to tip off a foreign civilian who’s paid half-attention to any shinobi news in the last five years. 

“Oh!” Naruto exclaims again. “Are you an Uchiha?”

 _Finally,_ Sasuke thinks. He manages to not roll his eyes and considers it an accomplishment.

“That’s so cool, ya know!” Naruto shouts, lighting up. Quieter, but no less excited, he adds, “My mom was friends with a woman named Mikoto Uchiha! Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. I met her once when I was really little. She and a boy a few years older than me came to see Jiji and me one time, and she gave me a kunai that used to be my dad’s and some books on my mom’s sealing techniques that―”

Naruto goes on, but Sasuke isn’t listening. He only knows about one family outside of the clan who his mom was friends with, and that was Kushina Uzumaki. Kushina, as in the heiress of what used to be the most powerful sealing clan in the world and Kushina, the wife of the fourth hokage Minato Namikaze. They were both heroes who gave their lives to protect Konoha from the nine-tailed fox and a man called Madara, Sasuke learned about them in school. But their son was supposed to be dead. _Naruto_ was supposed to be dead.

“―But I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

“What doesn’t?” Sasuke asks, looking at him with a new sense of amazement.

Naruto blinks. “Our pasts, ya know. I mean, even if I’m the son of the fourth hokage, it’s not like I ever knew him. And you were too young to know my mom, so it doesn’t matter who my parents were. Even though I’ve met Uchiha before, maybe you didn’t even know them.”

“Mikoto was my mother,” Sasuke responds before he can think.

Naruto goes still.

For a moment, they simply look at each other. Sasuke has never met someone who knew his family as anything other than traitors or people to pity, but Naruto knew them, knew his mother, as people. And Naruto; well, Naruto has never met a young shinobi from Konoha before, and the only connection he has to his family and the village they came from is his godfather and the kindness of a stranger whose son now sits before him.

“What kind of technique were you practicing?” Sasuke asks, deciding it best to change the subject before either of them says too much. They are shinobi, after all, and they’re supposed to be distrusting by nature.

“It’s the water-walking technique, but I modified it a little bit,” Naruto admits with a proud grin. “Jiji wants me to learn how to sit still and meditate so he can teach me a new technique. Since keeping still on water is hard enough when I don’t have to maintain it for a long time, this is the perfect place to practice, ya know!”

“Jiji?” Sasuke repeats under his breath, wondering what kind of man would make a kid learn how to do something as simple as sitting still through the most difficult means possible.

“Naruto, what did you do with my―”

The boys turn to find an old man with long white hair walking toward the hot spring in a green yukata. He stops mid-sentence with his gaze fixed on Sasuke, his eyes wide in surprise. Sasuke stares back calmly.

 _So,_ Sasuke thinks, _this is Naruto’s guardian._

To his credit, Jiraiya readjusts quickly and turns to his godson without losing his train of thought.

“I can’t seem to find my summoning scroll,” he tells Naruto, as though it’s perfectly normal to lose something as important as a summoning beast contract.

“It’s in the closet, Jiji,” Naruto responds easily, and okay, these two definitely aren’t normal.

“Thanks, brat,” the old man replies, turning away. “Don’t stay up too late. We’re heading to Kumo tomorrow. I want to introduce you to someone.”

Naruto raises his eyebrows and calls out, “Wait, Jiji!”

Once his godfather stops, Naruto turns toward Sasuke.

“Do you want to come with us?”

All three of them are silent for a moment. Sasuke blinks at Naruto, who looks so earnest and hopeful Sasuke can’t say no. But Itachi has his missions and Sasuke hasn’t really been far apart from him since they left the village together. But he wants to go and learn more about this stranger who was supposed to be dead, who knew his family and wants to know him.

“Let me ask my brother.”

Jiraiya’s expression doesn’t change much this time. He just smiles a little, his eyes warm and kind, and Sasuke wonders just for a second why Naruto’s family don’t see the Uchiha brothers as a threat. He quickly decides he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and gets up to go find his brother.

To his surprise, Naruto follows him.

Jiraiya returns to his room while the boys put on their own yukata, provided by the inn. Then Sasuke leads Naruto down the wooden halls on soft bare feet until they reach a paper door painted with scarlet cherry blossoms and Sasuke slides it open.

A thin man with long dark hair braided down his spine sits at a low desk with a wet brush in one hand, the other propped on the desk to hold up his head. He’s dressed like a shinobi, but his expression is relaxed, almost content. He looks up from the scroll in front of him with a tired smile as his little brother enters the room, and Naruto follows close behind.

“Who’s this, Otouto?” Itachi asks gently.

Naruto hides behind Sasuke, wary and shy.

“This is Naruto,” Sasuke introduces, glancing at him. He turns back to his brother and adds, “He’s my friend.”

Itachi’s eyebrows raise at that, but his smile doesn’t disappear. He rises to his feet with the silent grace of a predator and walks over to the small kitchenette to put a kettle on the stove.

“Well then, Naruto, would you like some tea?”

Naruto steps out from behind him with a nervous smile and nods.

“How did the two of you meet?” Itachi asks calmly as the boys sit on cushions around the table.

“We were in the hot spring,” Sasuke answers. “Nii-san, Naruto knew Mom.”

“Oh?” Itachi raises his eyebrows with an amused smile and fixes Naruto in his gaze. There’s a sparkle in his eyes that shows he knows something more, and he asks, “Do you remember?”

Naruto nods.

Itachi’s smile softens. “Good,” he says softly.

Sasuke blinks. Naruto mentioned his mother coming to see him with an older boy. Was it Itachi?

“What is it?” Itachi inquires of his little brother. “You brought him here for a reason, didn’t you?”

Sasuke squirms and looks away, worried that his brother is going to say no.

“I want Sasuke to travel with us,” Naruto proclaims, calmly staring down arguably one of the most dangerous shinobi in the world. “Ero-sennin wants to take me to Kumo, and Sasuke wants to come with us, ya know!”

“Ero-sennin,” Itachi repeats quietly.

His eyes widen when he remembers that the man who took Naruto in, the mentor of the fourth hokage and one-third of the strongest team to come out of Konoha also happens to write erotic fiction.

Itachi snorts. He turns away to hide his laughter and pours three mugs of tea, managing to calm down by the time he turns around with them. He hands one to each of the boys and joins them at the table. Naruto doesn’t seem to have any fear that Itachi would forbid it. Then again, he can’t exactly stop them if Sasuke decides to leave on his own.

“Alright,” Itachi replies easily, startling his brother. “When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

Naruto’s confidence is unshakable. If the surprised look on Itachi’s face is anything to go by, it impresses him.

“I suppose we should start packing,” he responds easily.

“Aniki!” Sasuke exclaims, gaping.

“What?” Itachi replies, turning toward him with a smile. “Did you really think I would let you go alone?”

Sasuke grumbles something that could be an insult, but Itachi just laughs.


	2. How to Win Friends and Influence People (by Sasuke Uchiha)

The trip to Kumogakure is difficult, to say the least. They have to travel from a borderland between the Land of Earth and the Land of Fire, which is closer than, say, Sunagakure. The trip still takes a few months on foot, even at Itachi and Jiraiya’s brutal pace.

There are some times when Sasuke wakes early to find Naruto already sparring a nearby clearing, talking to himself with eyes that flash red and nails slightly sharper than usual. There are others when Naruto wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of Sasuke sobbing and hugs him until he calms down. Neither of them asks about it and neither offers to explain. But the time they reach Kumo, they’re the best of friends.

“Names and intentions,” the guard at the village gate requests, monotone.

Jiraiya tells him lowly and claims they’re here for training. The guard looks up at each of them in turn and settles on Itachi. There’s something in his eyes; whether it’s distrust or respect is hard to tell. However, all he does is nod and give them directions to the Raikage’s office.

Sasuke and Naruto are silent and close as they make their way through the village. This isn’t the first time Naruto has witnessed the attention the Uchiha brothers receive. Those who don’t see them as cowards either fear or pity them. Sasuke has a sneaking suspicion that this is the reason he’s so nice to Naruto when he treats everyone else with suspicion and a glare. Maybe it’s also why Naruto stays by his side. Nobody should have to face this kind of prejudice alone.

When they make it to the Raikage’s office, it’s a relief. That is, until the Raikage glares at them and asks what they want.

“Ei-sama,” Jiraiya begins with a bow, grabbing Naruto’s neck to force him to bow too. “I came to ask your permission to allow my godson to train under the guidance of your brother, Killer Bee.”

Sasuke senses his brother’s almost imperceptible startle and glances at him curiously.

The Raikage hums thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair with the comfort and confidence of a king. At length, he asks them another question.

“Why would you need the mentorship of a jinchuuriki, when Konoha has lost its tailed beast?”

Jiraiya’s eyebrow twitches in his forced smile. He takes a deep breath and tells a story that shouldn’t be shared with an enemy of the village, but Itachi doesn’t react.

“Before their deaths, Kushina Uzumaki and Minato Namikaze transferred the kyuubi’s chakra to their son.” Jiraiya pauses for a moment as the Kumo nin startle. “That boy stands before you now. Naruto needs to learn how to control the beast. It’s only a matter of time before it tries to take advantage of him if it hasn’t already.”

For a long moment, nobody speaks.

Then, like thunder, the Raikage laughs.

“You want my brother to train a _boy_ to use a tailed beast? Very well, Jiraiya of the Sannin! You will find Bee in the cave to the east. I will have an entourage escort you.”

Jiraiya gives his thanks, and the four of them leave the office.

“You never told me,” Sasuke comments as he and Naruto fall back behind their guardians.

“It wasn’t important,” Naruto replies simply, both of them keeping their eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Bullshit. You’re a jinchuuriki. What’s it like?”

Naruto flashes him a too-sad smile and puts his hands behind his head as he answers, “It’s hell. But, I’ve always had someone to help me train when Jiji wasn’t around.”

His grin widens and it’s a good fake, but Sasuke sees through it.

“Come on,” Naruto exclaims, jogging ahead, “we’re gonna fall behind!”

Naruto races ahead and Sasuke calls after him, tripping over himself to keep up, but Naruto just laughs and dances out of his reach when Sasuke tries to grab him to avoid falling into the earth.

Naruto snorts, offers his hand to help him up, and Sasuke pulls him down into the dirt to scuffle until Itachi barks at them to keep up.

~+~+~+~

Of course, Killer Bee agrees to aid in Naruto’s training after no less than a day of Naruto’s insistent whining. And of course, the Uchiha brothers are forbidden from overseeing it. Jiraiya is only allowed to help because he knows how to undo the seal on Naruto’s belly.

Itachi finds a cheap hotel in the east side of the village and gets a room for the two of them, then promptly disappears to “find dinner.” Sasuke has never been to Kumo before and is curious what kind of local delicacies a stormy, canyon-filled region has.

Naruto’s training takes longer than Sasuke wants. He doesn’t see his best friend for weeks, and his brother keeps disappearing too. So, like he used to, Sasuke devotes himself to training. He spends hours a day on the rooftop, practicing maneuvers with an imaginary opponent who is suspiciously close to Naruto’s height and weight. It’s difficult to train without something to catch your punches, but Sasuke was long-accustomed to using his own momentum to aid the next swing. Before he met Naruto. Now, although he still has the technique from the times Naruto has dodged his hits, Sasuke gets bored quickly.

So one day, Sasuke decides to follow his brother.

Itachi is fast, but Sasuke has been practicing. He can just about keep up, and his brother doesn’t go far. Sasuke catches up with him at a mesa training ground as grey clouds gather overhead, and he watches from a protrusion of rock just below the edge. There’s a Kumo nin there too, with a pair of short-bladed katana.

He’s not stupid enough to assume the shinobi don’t notice him. The wind is picking up though, so Sasuke doesn’t hear the brief words they exchange before they launch into a spar.

Itachi is incredible. Sasuke has always known it, but seeing his brother fight again against someone who must be a jounin… Well, it’s exhilarating. Itachi never fights seriously when he’s sparring with Sasuke, and he never takes his brother on missions. It’s been _so long_ , and Sasuke missed this.

His brother starts with a kunai intended to distract, but the Kumo nin dodges without a glance. In an instant, they’re in front of each other with the Kumo nin’s right blade blocked by a kunai and their other wrist caught by Itachi’s right hand. They break apart and circle each other for a few steps before they attack again, and this time sparks fly from their blades as they fight. The storm gathers overhead, and suddenly the Kumo nin grins. They raise their blades to the sky as lightning breaks overhead and thunder cracks the sky.

Sasuke covered his ears with a grimace, but when he opens his eyes again the Kumo nin’s blades are _shining._

“Lightning,” Sasuke whispers, and the earth gives way beneath him.

~+~+~+~

Sasuke comes to with tears of pain pricking his eyes. His whole body aches and his ankle feels broken, but nothing serious seems badly broken. The training plateau his brother and the Kumo nin were sparring on wasn’t that far up, but Sasuke was too distracted by his revelation to catch himself. So now, he opens his eyes to look up blearily at his older brother’s worried frown and the voice of the Kumo nin pushing civilians back.

“Aniki, I’m fine,” Sasuke tries to argue, pushing him away as he sits up.

“No, you’re not. What were you doing up there, Otouto? I told you to stay at home,” Itachi retorts, helping his brother stand.

“I got bored,” Sasuke admits with a pout, turning his head away. He tries to blink the sparkles from his vision. It doesn’t work. “I can walk on my own.”

Itachi makes a low sound in the back of his throat, but he carefully lets Sasuke go, who promptly stumbles with a hiss of pain when he tries to step on his left foot. Itachi catches him before he falls again.

“I’ll take you home,” Itachi promises.

He kneels, evidently waiting for Sasuke to climb on his back, but they haven’t done that since the night they ran. Sasuke is much bigger now and has the pride of your average twelve-year-old, so he scoffs and starts to limp toward their hotel. Itachi manages to hide his disappointment and stands up to follow.

“We can continue this later,” Itachi tells the Kumo nin lowly as he passes.

“I look forward to it, Itachi-san.”

Sasuke winces as he limps up the stairs, holding himself up by the handrail. Itachi hasn’t touched him since Sasuke rebutted his piggyback ride, but Sasuke could really use his help right now. Not that he plans to admit it.

“Where’s Naruto?” Sasuke manages to grit out in a valiant attempt to distract himself from the pain.

“Still training,” Itachi answers calmly. “Bee-sama and Jiraiya have been working with him tirelessly. They say he’s making record progress.”

“Good,” Sasuke pants, relieved to finally make it to the landing.

He limps along the wall to their door and unlocks it with his key as Itachi follows close behind. Once they step inside, the first thing Sasuke notices is the open window.

“Get down,” Itachi hisses.

He grabs his little brother’s head and forces him to kneel as two kunai embed themselves in the wall behind them, right where their heads had been.

Sasuke gulps.

Two masked shinobi jump out from behind the furniture and aim perfectly-timed lightning-ball attacks at them, but Itachi counters with a gale of wind that disperses them. The shinobi dodge his water attack but counter with earth. Itachi leaps forward, pulling two wired kunai from his hip but Sasuke sees one of the shinobi grin and duck around Itachi to stab him from behind. Itachi notices too late, so Sasuke _moves_.

His electric-charged shuriken embeds one of its spines in the shinobi’s hand, electrocuting him and forcing him to drop the kunai he was about to use on Itachi with a clatter.

That guy’s down for the count.

Itachi cripples the other with half a second of eye contact when the shinobi is too startled to avoid it. Then Itachi turns on his kneeling younger brother.

“What,” he asks sharply, “was that?”

“I saw how that Kumo nin used lightning in his spar with you,” Sasuke admits with a pained smile, kneeling on the floor with his broken ankle throbbing in pain. “I wanted to try it out.”

“You could have missed,” Itachi points out calmly.

“I didn’t,” Sasuke pants, leaning on the doorway. Isn’t he a little too out of breath? “It worked, right?”

“You―”

Itachi’s anger is stalled as he looks down at Sasuke’s arm. Sasuke follows his gaze and thinks, _So that’s why I’m so dizzy._ There is a senbon sticking out of his shoulder with purple poison dripping from the tip.

Sasuke laughs, breathless, before the world goes dark again.

~+~+~+~

Sasuke can hear voices. One of them is his brother’s, low and gentle but very firm. He says something about an ambush and missing-nin, then something about eyes and the black market. The voice that answers is slow and disappointed, not in Itachi but in someone else. The… the attackers? Oh. That’s right. But if they came after him, what about Naruto? Is Naruto safe? Where is Naruto? Where, how, why? Why were they attacked? What if they wanted Naruto? What if Naruto isn’t safe.

Sasuke’s arm is numb. His ankle still hurts, but not as much as the rest of his body. He’s on fire, he’s aching, but he needs to _get up_ and his body won’t move, he can’t open his eyes because when he tries it hurts _so much_ , but _Naruto_ is missing and he _has_ to know what, he has to _see_ that he’s alright.

Sasuke opens his eyes and finds his world painted red. He croaks a sound and rolls over onto his side on the cot―no, the couch, and stumbles to his feet. He makes it three agonizing steps before cold hands catch his shoulders and he falls to his knees. Sasuke is clutching his arm, his mind is hazy from the pain, but he has to see Naruto and this man isn’t him. Itachi is asking him questions, making demands, but Sasuke can’t listen. He has to see Naruto.

“Where’s… Naruto?” Sasuke rasps, letting his eyelids fall.

“What?” Itachi’s voice is clear now, alarmed and concerned, but he gives an answer and it’s the only thing Sasuke cares about right now. “He’s still with Killer Bee, but Sasuke―”

“No,” Sasuke growls, struggling to his feet again with gritted teeth to keep himself from crying out. His jaw creaks. “I have… to see him.”

_I have to know he’s safe._

“Sasuke, you’re badly injured!” Itachi shouts, and it makes Sasuke cringe. Quieter, Itachi continues, “Please lie down. You need medicine, Sasuke. The doctors will be here soon.”

“I don’t fucking care!” Sasuke screams at him. “What if we were just a distraction?!”

Jiraiya and Itachi’s eyes go wide. Sasuke is too exhausted to keep going, so he sits down on the floor and leans back against the wall.

“What if Naruto isn’t safe?” he whispers, almost too afraid to say it because saying it would make his fear real.

Itachi and Jiraiya exchange a quick glance before Jiraiya flashes out the window and then he’s gone, and Itachi is at Sasuke’s side murmuring encouragements and comfort but he’s too tired to listen. The world is too bright and Sasuke welcomes the sweet release of sleep, despite his brother’s anxious warnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes. Well, I'm sorry. :)


	3. How to Piss Off a Jinchuriki (by Naruto Uzumaki)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all your encouraging comments! Enjoy!

Naruto’s training is going very well. He’s met his parents, who are both very proud of him, and befriended the demon fox who has been whispering to him for as long as he can remember. Sometimes Kurama’s words were helpful: tips in training, critiques in sparring, or comments on his chakra control. Other times they were dangerous: warnings, threats, poisonous manipulations that Naruto learned not to listen to. But it seems the demon fox wasn’t as against Naruto as he tried to appear, and he gives in to the kid after just about a week. After that, it’s just the two of them learning how to work together.

Naruto and Kurama practice partial transformations and full, from claws and red eyes to Kurama’s chakra form enveloping Naruto in golden light as he sprouts nine tails and long ears. They bicker and compromise and insult and critique, but Naruto is strong and Kurama makes him stronger.

Which is why, when Jiraiya interrupts their training and says that Sasuke was attacked, Naruto takes off without a second thought and Killer Bee doesn’t try to stop him.

Naruto whips through the village like a comet, hot and bright. Villagers and shinobi look up in surprise as he passes overhead, racing across rooftops and clotheslines. The hotel isn’t very far away, but he can’t get there fast enough. Jiraiya hadn’t finished speaking by the time he left. All Naruto heard was that they had been attacked, and Sasuke was poisoned.

“Damn it, bastard. You’d better not die already,” he growls as the window comes into view.

He shoots through it and lands in a crouch, his tailed beast mode fading away to nothing. From the shocked look Itachi gives him and the claws he sees on his nails when he reaches out toward Sasuke, he must still be in partial mode. Kurama’s voice rumbles deep within him with a promise to heal if Naruto presses his hand to the wound, and for once, Naruto doesn’t question him.

He lays his fingertips to the scratch on Sasuke’s arm carefully, making sure his nails don’t worsen it. The senbon has been removed, but Sasuke’s breath is coming short and he’s sweating. His eyes are closed. Naruto lets his chakra, Kurama’s chakra leak into the wound and feels it react with the poison. It fizzles and fades away, reverted to harmless natural proteins in his bloodstream. Sasuke gasps awake.

Naruto finds his red gaze reflected in Sasuke’s inky black eyes as their glaze of pain fades away and his breathing evens out. Naruto exhales a sigh of relief, not having noticed he was holding his breath, and sits back into a cross-legged position.

“Naruto,” Sasuke breathes like a prayer, staring at him in wide-eyed amazement. “Your eyes…”

Naruto touches a hand to his cheek and grins, feeling the sharpness of his fangs with giddy pride. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

“What did you do?” Itachi asks sharply, drawing their attention to him as he kneels close by, gaping. “How did you heal him?”

Naruto grins, and he can feel Kurama grinning too.

 _Let me speak to them,_ Kurama requests, and Naruto can’t find a reason to say no.

“ _My chakra negated the poison_ ,” Kurama explains gruffly, making both the Uchihas jump.

“Kyuubi? Why did you help him?” Itachi questions, frowning. “After what Madara did to you…”

“ _He’s important to Naruto. And for an Uchiha, he’s not that bad._ ”

Then Naruto is back, and he trades a smile with the fox.

“Was that…?”

Naruto nods, and then Jiraiya comes in through the window and breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of him.

“I almost had a heart attack, brat,” Jiraiya scolds, scuffing Naruto on the top of his head. Then his hand settles into his golden hair and ruffles it softly as he says, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Naruto looks up at his godfather, the man who raised him and taught him everything he knows, who realized that reading the theory of chakra makes it harder for him to learn than figuring out his own ways to do it, and smiles.

“Ji-san,” Naruto calls, which catches Jiraiya’s attention because he only calls him that when he has a solemn request, “I want to take the chunin exams.”

There is a sharp intake of breath from someone else in the room, and the four of them look over at the two criminals tied together with wire, their weapons piled up a safe distance away from them and their masks stripped to reveal a man and a woman.

“What?” Itachi asks calmly, narrowing his eyes at them.

The man who caught their attention looks away quickly and bows his head. “The chunin exams are in Konoha this year.”

“And?”

The woman continues, “There are rumors that Suna is planning an attack.”

“I see,” Jiraiya muses. He looks down at the boys with a thoughtful frown before he turns to Itachi and asks, “Do you think they’re ready?”

Itachi rises to his feet with a calm, challenging expression Naruto has only seen him wear one on the trip to Kumo, when he caught the boys trying to sneak out for training in the middle of the night after giving them strict instructions to rest. He had punished them by giving them a brutal training regimen for the next two weeks.

“They will be by the time we get there.”

Naruto and Sasuke exchange a fearful glance, and the Konoha jounin grin.

~+~+~+~

Sasuke has a hellish time mastering his new lightning techniques, and Naruto is positively gleeful. He’s finally fast enough to keep up with Sasuke’s sharingan when they spar, and Kurama gives him warnings and tips to avoid Sasuke’s attacks. There is one time when Naruto is certain he’s done for and Kurama takes over his body just long enough to teach him a new trick that sends Sasuke sprawling on his back in the grass. Naruto does a victory dance until Sasuke tackles him from behind.

After a month, Sasuke, Naruto, Jiraiya and Itachi walk up to Konoha’s northern gate with the boys in front, one grinning and dressed in layers of gold and black fabrics with white pants that allow for mobility and fashion while the other wears a simple dark blue hakama and low geta, his black hair tied up in a messy bun and a silver katana hanging from his waist.

“Names and― _holy shit_!” one of the guards exclaims as he looks up and finds one of the Sannin, the Uchiha brothers, and a boy who looks shockingly like the fourth hokage standing before him without a single hitai-ate in sight.

“Um,” the guard stammers, shakily reorganizing the paperwork he scattered with his outburst. “Welcome back, uh, Jiraiya-sama, Uchiha-san. S-someone, sh-show them to the Hokage’s office, please?”

One of the other chunin on duty comes forward, staring at them with wide eyes until he turns away with a muttered, “Right this way, please.”

Sasuke smiles, and Naruto grins. Itachi bought them some new clothes for the occasion with the bounty he earned from capturing a man named Orochimaru. Jiraiya promised to treat them to ramen when they got to Konoha, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to get to that immediately.

Naruto looks around as they pass through the village. This is the place his parents came from. It’s the place where Sasuke’s family were mistreated to the point of revolution and attacked instead of listened to, where Jiraiya decided to never take Naruto unless he asked, and Naruto never felt a connection to.

They garner stares and curious whispers as they pass. The chunin doesn’t talk until they reach the Hokage’s office, and even then he only bows and tells them this is it. Then he shuts the door behind them and leaves the four of them alone with the third hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, and his ANBU guards.

“Well,” Sarutobi begins, his voice cracked and rough with age, “this is a surprise.”

Naruto looks out the window and blinks, because staring back at him from a face of stone is his father. He doesn’t listen to the words exchanged between the adults until the Hokage calls his name, and Naruto peels his attention away from his father long enough to pay attention.

“Can you demonstrate an E-rank jutsu or above?” Hiruzen asks the boys.

They silently and separately decide to impress the Hokage with their favorite techniques, but keep their trump cards up their sleeves.

Sasuke draws his sword as it begins to crackle with blue electricity as Sword of Kusanagi technique (B-rank) that he developed while his ankle healed, and Naruto summons a shadow clone (B-rank) to help him create the rasengan (A-rank) that was his father’s. Jiraiya taught him that years ago. It was one of his first real fighting techniques, and once he got it, it came easily.

Hiruzen blinks in surprise at both of them. “I suppose that qualifies you as Konoha genin,” he says at length.

His eyes twinkle with delight as he reaches into the drawers of his desk and pulls out two Konoha hitai-ate on black straps. The boys each take one and tie it around their foreheads to stand before their Hokage proudly. Sasuke’s hand settles on his katana’s hilt and Naruto laces his hands behind his head, beaming. Then the Hokage says something to one of the ANBU, who nods and disappears.

“The chunin exams require a team of three people,” Hiruzen tells the boys in front of him. “However, there is a genin team whose members are not all very… motivated. One of them has expressed a desire to take the chunin exams all on her own if she can, and I believe she would be happy to work with you.”

They exchange a glance, Naruto shrugs, and Sasuke says, “We’d be happy to meet her.”

A few minutes later, a pink-haired girl barrels into the office screaming excitedly about new teammates and _finally_ taking the exams, as a masked man with grey hair follows with his nose stuck in an orange book and two identical boys shuffle in behind them, avoiding eye contact with anyone.

“Kakashi, Team Seven,” the third hokage introduces, “meet Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha.”

The masked guy looks up at Naruto’s last name, but the girl launches herself toward Sasuke before he can say anything. Naruto bares his teeth and his eyes flash red as she gets too close, but Sakura stops just short of her former classmate. Sasuke looks at her coolly, leaning away from her slightly.

“Sasuke-kun?!” she exclaims, breathless with disbelief. “Is it really you?”

“Long time, no see, Sakura.”

Naruto blinks as she squeals and throws her arms around his best friend, who receives it with a grunt and keeps his hands to himself.

Naruto doesn’t like her.

The harpy-girl turns toward him with an expression of shy curiosity and asks Sasuke, “Who’s this?”

“Oi,” Naruto growls, scowling as the nails of his right hand start to lengthen into claws.

“He’s my friend,” Sasuke replies calmly, giving Naruto a look that reads, _Cool it._

Naruto reluctantly makes himself keep looking like a normal human being.

“Oh!”

Sakura stares at him, taking in everything from his new hitai-ate and his clothes to the markings on his cheeks. Naruto stares back with narrow eyes and a slight frown. Eventually, she meets his gaze, blushes, and turns away. She glances at him again out of the corner of her eye as she puts her hands behind her back and introduces herself.

“Hi, Naruto-kun wasn’t it? I’m Sakura Haruno.”

Naruto’s frown deepens.

“Uzumaki,” Kakashi speaks up, stepping forward. “Was that your mother’s name?”

Naruto looks up at him in surprise. He glances at Jiraiya, who nods with a warm smile, and Naruto nods. Kakashi glances at the Hokage Monument with a sad look in his eyes. Naruto startles when he realizes Kakashi is staring at the face of the fourth hokage, which means…

“Did you know my parents?” His voice is more breathless than he’d like, but he can’t help it.

Kakashi looks at him again with a pained expression and kneels. He places his hand on Naruto’s shoulder and says, “Minato-sensei and Kushina-san were two of the bravest shinobi I’ve ever met. You should be proud of them.”

Naruto’s eyes widen. He’s heard that from everyone who found out who he was before, but it never felt so honest. This man knew them. He was Minato’s student, which means that he probably has more stories about Naruto’s dad than anyone except Jiraiya.

Sarutobi finishes stuffing his pipe and asks the girl, Sakura, “Are these two acceptable teammates for you, Sakura-kun?”

“Eh? Oh, yes!” She turns to him with a bow and thanks him.

Kakashi straightens up. “Sandaime-sama,” he requests softly, “I would like to officially nominate this team for the chunin exams.”

“Duly noted,” Sarutobi replies solemnly. “I’ll have the paperwork sent to your apartment. In the meantime, why don’t you three get to know each other, hm? Training ground eight should be open.”

“I’ll go look for a place to stay,” Itachi states calmly, turning toward the door.

“Hm, Naruto,” Sarutobi calls scribbling something on a small piece of paper, “I believe your parents left a house for you at this address.”

He hands Naruto the note with a warm smile and Naruto turns toward his family, the Uchihas and a perverted sage to ask, “Will you come with me?”

“Of course, dobe,” Sasuke retorts hotly, raising an eyebrow. “You really think we’d leave you alone after what happened in Kumo? How many shops did you get banned for after breaking their windows at full speed?”

“Hey! I wasn’t the one who fell off a cliff and got poisoned! Who saved you, again?!”

They devolve into their usual banter as Jiraiya sighs and Itachi smiles at them like a proper older brother.


	4. How to Play Catch Up (by Sakura Haruno)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your support on this fic! I really liked this chapter and I hope you do too.

After the Hokage dismissed them all and she was left with her new teammates and their guardians, Sakura got the sense that she’s not exactly needed for anything other than the team member count requirement.

“Hey, Sasuke, can you show me that kick that always knocks me down?” Naruto asks as they start to walk away. “I think Kurama figured out a counter for it, ya know!”

 _Kurama?_ Sakura wants to ask.

“Dobe. We said we’d get ramen first, so let’s wait until tomorrow.”

“Sakura-chan,” a warm, gentle voice calls from beside her.

She looks up to find Itachi Uchiha smiling down at her with kind eyes not befitting the stories she’s heard of him.

“Would you like to have dinner with us?” Itachi offers, tilting his head slightly.

Sakura nods, speechless, and falls into step behind him.

They walk through the village led by Jiraiya until they reach a large house built on a round wooden base with a tower and a long set of stairs.

“This is it,” Jiraiya calls, putting his hands on his hips as he stares up at it with a fond smile.

Naruto’s eyes are wide as he looks up at the building.

To be inside the home of the fourth hokage is… strange. There are pieces of the lives of Minato and Kushina scattered throughout the house: a pink apron, photographs, dead plants that have withered and decayed on the floor.

The whole house is covered in a fine layer of dust and cobwebs scattered here and there, but Naruto just smiles and sets his backpack down on one of the dining room chairs and declares, “It’s perfect.”

The others set their stuff down and for the first time, Sakura notices all of them have been carrying what must be all their belongings with them. The Uchihas together simply place two sealing scrolls on the table.

“Ramen!” Naruto yells, pumping his fist as he walks toward the door.

“Hold on a second,” Jiraiya calls with a fond smile, pulling him back by the collar of his vest. “We should settle in, first.”

“But Jiji, you promised!” Naruto shouts accusatory, pointing his finger at Jiraiya of the Sannin (Sakura’s not going to get over that any time soon). “Ramen!”

“He’s right, Naruto,” Itachi calls with the same fond expression, and Sakura begins to wonder how long these four have been together. “There’s still plenty that has to be taken care of, but I suppose that can wait until you three have had a decent meal. Why don’t you go down to Ichiraku on the corner, hm? Here,” he adds, taking a coin purse from the folds of his clothing and pressing a few gold coins into Sasuke’s hand. “We’ll tidy up and meet you at the training grounds. I’m sure you three want to get to know each other.”

There’s an edge of steel to his tone that warns them they had better be at the training grounds getting to know each other by the time he gets there.

Sasuke bows his head, Naruto thanks him loudly with a wave, and Sakura bows deeply to them both before she follows the boys outside.

“We have approximately three weeks to prepare,” Sasuke points out calmly.

Sakura notices that the two of them part and turn toward her slightly to invite her into the conversation, and she assumes they would be walking side by side if she weren’t here. She appreciates the gesture, though she’s not sure how much she’ll be able to contribute.

As happy as Sakura is to see Sasuke again, she’s much more interested in the best friend he brought with him.

Sasuke is quiet and cold. He was even when they were still classmates, and it seems it’s only gotten worse. He sets her on edge in a way he didn’t before, and she thinks it has something to do with the look in his eye; that suspicion, distrust like he’s determined to reject her before she can hurt him. She supposes it makes sense after what happened to his family, but she finds it unfair to be held accountable for mistakes that aren’t hers.

Naruto, on the other hand, seems calm and sweet, like honey or sweet dango. His eyes are bright blue, his blond hair curly but tame, and his smile is constant. Naruto is like the sun, like the sound of waves at the beach or warm tea and a blanket after a cold winter training session. His very presence is comforting, his smile infectious. He ought to be famous, but he doesn’t say a word about his past or his family. His father was the fourth hokage, his mother the kyuubi’s last jinchuriki, his godfather and guardian one of the Sannin, but Naruto acts like all it’s all perfectly normal.

Sometimes his eyes flash red and she writes it off as a trick of the light, or his canines look a little too long and his nails, too, but plenty of shinobi have strange physical alterations for ceremonial or cultural reasons. Especially in foreign villages. Naruto wasn’t even born in Konoha, so maybe he picked them up elsewhere. That’s another interesting thing about him: Naruto seems to have seen more of the world than any given jounin in the village.

Sakura likes him.

They eat and head to the training grounds, which Sakura leads them to upon Naruto’s request (Sasuke claimed he knew how to get there, but apparently even he is weak against Naruto’s sunshine grin). Itachi and Kakashi-sensei are waiting for them. Jiraiya is nowhere to be found.

“Yo, team seven,” Kakashi greets at the sight of them.

He beckons them over with the orange book balanced in his other hand, smiling behind his mask. The three genin walk up to him calmly. Sasuke slips the change from their meal to his brother, who accepts it with a smile and tucks it into his clothes.

“Let’s see your fighting styles, shall we?” Itachi suggests with a slightly too devious smile, rising to his feet smoothly. “If any of you manage to land a hit on me, I’ll end the spar. I won’t use the mangekyō sharingan.”

Naruto and Sasuke exchange a look that’s both solemn and confident before they turn to Sakura.

“Don’t get in our way,” Sasuke warns coldly.

Sakura blinks in surprise. With her brute strength and natural aptitude for jutsu, she’s never had someone her age imply that she’s weak before. She clenches her fists, gritting her teeth.

“Oh, trust me,” she promises sardonically, “I won’t.”

One of them just has to land a hit, huh? That shouldn’t be too difficult.

She is quickly proven wrong.

Itachi begins the spar with a genjutsu that sends Sakura and Naruto into a false world where they end up attacking an imaginary enemy. Sasuke ends up sparring with his brother alone until Sakura realizes, releases herself, and then does the same for Naruto. The three of them attack a jounin while trying to not look him in the eye, evade his counterattacks, and work together. Itachi dances around them like a shadow, untouchable and smiling. Every kunai they catch and evade is thrown perfectly, never aimed to kill. His fireball attacks are sliced in two by Sasuke or weathered by the other two, followed by water techniques that leave them soaked to the bone. He brushes off Naruto and Sasuke’s jutsu attacks like they’re nothing, blocks or dodges Sakura’s punches with a grin, and laughs in their faces the few times they manage to convince themselves they’ve cornered him; only to end up flat on their backs in the grass again.

Sasuke and Naruto don’t seem to be losing patience, Sakura notes, but they must be used to this. That would also explain how they’ve advanced to genin without proper academy training. But then Naruto _growls_ , and Sakura knows he’s not as collected as he seems. It’s not a sound any human should be able to make. He rises into a crouch and glares at Itachi, who stands with his weight on one foot, arms resting at his sides. He narrows his eyes at Naruto, and for the first time, Sakura sees his smile fall.

Then she looks at Naruto and realizes why.

His eyes are flashing red, pupils split into slits. His nails have grown into long black claws that scrape the ground beneath his feet, and he’s _glowing_.

Naruto lunges and Itachi disappears. Sakura looks up to find him standing on a thick branch of an old, thick tree at the edge of the clearing. Sakura feels someone grab her wrist and turns to find Sasuke staring at her with urgency as he tells her to move. She follows him to the opposite edge of the field at full-speed and only looks back as a crack rips through the air. The tree is ripped in half and Itachi is falling away from each of Naruto’s clawed swipes, his braid dancing in the air. Sakura’s eyes widen. In an instant, Sasuke is gone from her side and rushing in to help Naruto. Sakura grits her teeth and goes after him.

Sasuke comes up behind his brother with his katana glittering with electricity and Itachi dodges to the left. The boys chase after him, but Itachi doesn’t have room or time to forge a hand sign and retaliate with anything other than his kunai. As the boys force him backward, Sakura takes a deep breath to help her conceal her presence and leaps. Itachi looks back over his shoulder long enough for his eyes to widen in surprise before her fist connects with his jaw.

Itachi Uchiha transforms into a cloud of smoke. Sakura’s momentum carries her too far and the boys look up with matching expressions of dawning realization as she comes crashing into them and sends them all tumbling to the ground.

“Nice shot,” Naruto grits out from beneath her, wincing.

“Hmph. Not bad,” Sasuke agrees, smiling as he lies across her legs, his arm trapped under Naruto’s neck, which is the Sasuke equivalent of _I might’ve underestimated you._

“Thanks,” Sakura pants, sitting up carefully.

The sound of footsteps draws their attention to the two men walking toward them. Itachi’s expression is impassive, but his eyebrows are raised ever so slightly. Kakashi is beaming. He claps his hands together as he approaches, standing slightly behind Itachi.

“Very good! I never thought I’d see the day my old kohai fell at the hands of a few genin.”

Itachi shoots him a withering glare at that but turns back to the kids with his chin raised and an echo of a smile on his lips. The sun is setting behind him, casting him in a golden glow above them. He puts a hand on his hip and stares at Sakura for a moment.

She grins.

“Your right hook is sloppy.”

Sakura guffaws. Naruto snickers, Sasuke sighs and mutters something like “here we go,” and Kakashi looks at Itachi with his eyebrows raised.

“I imagine you’ve been allowed to get away with a lack of form with pure physical strength,” Itachi continues, “but that simply won’t fly in the exams. If you are to be on the same team as my brothers, I expect you to be at the same level. I do not intend to let the Uchiha name fall any lower than it already has.”

Sakura scowls, clenching her fists. She’s about to retaliate when Naruto puts a consoling hand on her shoulder and whispers, “Don’t worry about it. He’s always like this.”

“That’s his way of saying ‘you can do better,’” Sasuke adds, sitting up with a small, closed-eyed smile. “Next he’ll teach you how to throw a proper punch.”

Sakura looks up in awe as Itachi asks her to rise and begins to do just that. He asks her to show him slowly and she does. Itachi nods once before he readjusts her posture, and asks her to do it again. And again. And again.

At some point, Kakashi decides they don’t need his help and goes home. Sasuke and Naruto stick around, playing some endurance game with their chakra control in the trees while Sakura wonders just how they can see so well in the dark. Itachi doesn’t let her question it for long, though, and it’s not until late into the evening when she’s allowed to go home.

Sakura’s body aches down to her bones. Her skin is covered in sweat and dirt, her eyes are drooping, and she’s absolutely euphoric.

When her parents ask her why she’s in such a good mood, she tells them all about her new team.


	5. How to Show the World What You Can Do (by Shikamaru Nara)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of what I based Naruto’s outfit in the final exams on.

It doesn’t take long for the news to spread. The Uchihas are back. Minato’s son survived. They’re going to take the chunin exams.

Shikamaru really doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. Half his class is made up of the heirs of Konoha’s best clans. It’s not like those two are that special. At least, that’s what he thought.

Then he saw them spar.

Ino dragged him out of bed on the morning of the first part of the exams at five o’clock in the morning screaming something about Sasuke, while Choji rubbed his eyes groggily behind her. Shikamaru shuffled out of bed and shared a longsuffering glance with Choji before they followed her to the training grounds. What they saw made them snap wide awake.

Half the clearing is already destroyed, with rubble and upturned earth scattered. Two craters have broken the earth, and the two figures flitting across the field are almost too fast to follow. One of them wears a grin like a fox while he blocks an electrified sword with nothing but sharp, black nails. The other has long, dark hair, tied up in a bun atop his head as he follows his opponent with sharp, red eyes.

That’s when Shikamaru realizes who they are.

He takes a look around and sees that his team aren’t the only onlookers. Other genin from his village and others are watching from the treeline, along with a few jounin placing bets and at least two ANBU. The hokage stands side-by-side with the raikage, who’s grinning with his arms crossed over his chest.

A boom draws Shikamaru’s attention back to the boys sparring in the field just in time to see Sasuke Uchiha go flying while the fourth hokage’s son stands in a fighting stance, fist outstretched.

Sasuke sits up halfway across the field and calls foul play. Naruto Uzumaki blows a raspberry in response and waves his hands by the sides of his head. Sasuke scrambles to his feet and tackles him in the middle of the field where the two of them scuffle in a cloud of dust until they get bored and sit up. They look at each other for a moment and crack up.

Shikamaru stares at them, dumbfounded.

Someone brushes past him and he looks up, about to apologize for being in the way, but the words die on his tongue when he sees the face of the man who just walked past him.

Itachi Uchiha strides out onto the field and Naruto greets him with an exclamation of victory that almost makes him topple over, while Sasuke just smirks and slips his hands in his pockets. Itachi cuffs them both on the sides of the head, mutters something that makes them both look away from him, and starts to drag them toward the crowd by their ears.

Shikamaru very swiftly steps out of their way. He makes eye contact with Naruto as he passes, struggling to escape a former ANBU’s grasp. He flashes Shikamaru a grin that he returns with a shaky smile and a wave, which earns them both a curious glance from Itachi as he walks past. Before Shikamaru has a chance to introduce himself, the three are gone. He’s left listening to Ino’s gleeful rant while his team walks back to Konoha to begin their last week of training before the exams.

~+~+~+~

Shikamaru isn’t surprised to see Sasuke and Naruto in the exam room after the zero phase. He _is_ surprised to see Sakura with them, and by the way Ino is fuming, she is too.

It quickly dawns on Shikamaru that the point of the exam is to cheat, but he does know most of the answers. He shadow-paralyzes Choji to write both their answers, then looks up in time to see Ino mind-control someone else long enough to memorize their answers. Then the proctor announces the conditions of the tenth and final question: fail, and you will never be allowed to pass beyond genin; forfeit, and their entire team is disqualified but allowed to take the exam another time. Three teams forfeit. Five. Ten. Ibiki Morino dismisses thirteen teams and waits for the doors to shut behind them before he loudly announces that the remaining teams all pass.

Shikamaru and the rest of the room all breathe a sigh of relief.

“Woohoo! We did it!” Naruto exclaims loudly, leaping out of his seat with his fist held high.

“Hmph. Sit down, dobe,” Sasuke replies calmly, but his voice lacks any kind of bite.

Shikamaru barely listens to the proctor’s explanation of the testing process. He’s too busy staring at Naruto, whose test he caught a glimpse of when Naruto stood up.

It’s completely blank.

It’s completely blank, which means he either figured out the true purpose of the exam well before anyone else, or he’s just that much of an idiot. The strange thing is, Sasuke didn’t seem the least bit concerned when Naruto didn’t raise his hand but Sakura’s pencil cracks when she releases it, spilling into a hundred pieces on her desk.

They really are a strange team.

~+~+~+~

They have a day’s rest before the second phase begins. It’s a multi-day survival/capture mission in the Forest of Death, an environment where Konoha genin clearly have a terrain advantage. Shikamaru doesn’t bother worrying about Team Seven except to be relieved their gate is so far away from Team Ten’s. They run into another team halfway through the first day and take their scroll, but they decide to get another one just in case the first isn’t what they need. They spend the second day hunting down and evading other teams, until they run into a weak Kusagakure team and steal their scroll. They head to the central tower after that only to find a number of teams already passed and waiting. Among them is, unsurprisingly, Team Seven.

“You guys―!” Shikamaru exclaims at the sight of them, but Ino beats him to it.

“Sasuke-kuuuuun!” She launches herself toward him only to be stopped not by Sakura, but by Naruto.

“Hm?” Sasuke hums, looking up from his thoughts. He looks at her for a moment without an ounce of recognition before he asks her, “Who are you?”

Ino is either about to start a fight or faint. Shikamaru doesn’t know which.

“Sasuke-kun,” she says dangerously, her left eye twitching, “we used to go to school together. Don’t you remember?”

“Ino-chan, are you seriously still holding on to that stupid crush?”

Sakura is the _last_ person Shikamaru expected to ask that, and by the look on Ino’s face, she’s shocked too.

Sakura looks up from the book in her lap with an impassive expression. “Sasuke-kun has been gone a long time, Ino. You shouldn’t judge people by who they used to be just because you haven’t grown.”

Shikamaru snorts a laugh, but a glare from his teammate has him disguising it as a cough.

~+~+~+~

If anyone thought the first two phases were too much, they’re nothing compared to the finals. The preliminaries went alright, although Lee’s match had to be stopped. The guy from Suna got disqualified for unnecessary force and had to be knocked out before he tried to kill the proctor, which was enough to involve the ANBU who had been secretly keeping an eye on the exam. Shikamaru hasn’t seen him around since. Choji and Ino failed, but they’re perfectly happy to cheer Shikamaru on. Sasuke and Naruto passed too, which is good. Shikamaru would like to fight one of them at some point, if for no other reason than to get to know them.

However, he ends up forfeiting in the first round against a hot-headed girl from Sunagakure called Temari. Naruto gets pitted against Shino and promptly knocks him out, screaming, as soon as he sees Shino’s bugs.

Secretly, Shikamaru doesn’t blame him.

Sasuke’s match is much less interesting and much, much slower. He and Neji barely talk as they fight, but Sasuke gains the upper hand in the end thanks to a genjutsu. He knocks Neji unconscious with the hilt of his sword.

Lee beat the puppeteer from Suna in three kicks because it turns out the guy’s pretty weak without his toys. But Lee loses to Temari in the second round, and everyone turns their attention to the youngest living Uchiha and the son of the fourth hokage and Kushina Uzumaki.

Sasuke is wearing a simple black hakama with his hair half-up in a bun. Naruto faces him with a wicked fox-like grin and slim-fitting, black athletic clothes with gold hems and a billowing white overcoat.

When the match begins, they disappear from their spots and clash in the center of the arena. Naruto pushes back Sasuke’s electrified katana with a pair of rubber-wrapped kunai and immediately creates two shadow clones, who corner Sasuke alongside their original. He fights them with ease, twirling in the center to counter their every attack with his sword. After a few moments, he must get bored, because he blows them all away with a burst of flame that sends the original sprawling with his overcoat singed at the edges. Sasuke leaps out of the smoke to follow him and tries to kick him mid-air, but Naruto pushes himself up with a gust of wind and counters with a palm attack. Sasuke blocks and redirects it mid-air, bringing Naruto directly into his waiting fist. Naruto coughs.

They land in the dust, crouching.

Shikamaru realizes with a shiver that Naruto’s still grinning. There’s a sharper edge to it now, and his chakra begins to flare. If normal chakra is like water, his is oil catching fire. Sasuke’s is ice by comparison, hardened and refined. For the first time since the exams began, Shikamaru sees Naruto’s nails elongate into the talons they were during their spar a month ago. It seems like a trick of the light at first, but his eyes flash red and his skin starts to glow. Sasuke blinks and his eyes change too as he shifts to a defensive stance, his sword raised in front of him.

Naruto comes at him even faster than before.

“Kyuubi,” someone murmurs behind him, reverent.

“It’s the kyuubi!” someone gasps.

“He’s the jinchuuriki.”

“Demon fox.”

“Monster.”

“ _Kushina._ ”

Shikamaru looks up at the last voice to find Kakashi standing in the aisle behind him, staring wide-eyed at the match. His hands are shaking.

A few moments later, Naruto steals a kiss and wins the match with a grin and a wink at the crowd.


	6. How to Develop Feelings for Your Best Friend (by Sasuke Uchiha)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this chapter’s a little short but I liked the way it ends. Also, here’s a reverse color ref for Naruto’s outfit at the end.

Honestly, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. It was just a kiss. Just a stupid, cheating kiss in the name of winning an impossible fight that would have ended in a stalemate otherwise. He wants to believe it has nothing to do with their lives outside of the fight, but it has everything to do with that. It’s precisely because of how close they are, how strong they are, how well they know each other’s moves that Naruto had to resort to that. It’s also precisely why Sasuke can’t simply shrug it off and go to sleep that night.

He and Naruto share a bed (they have since Kumo―it’s strange to do anything else, at this point), so Sasuke has to be careful when he extricates himself from his usual position as Naruto’s personal teddy bear. He sneaks out of bed and hops up on the window sill, casting one last glance over his shoulder before he slips off into the night.

He doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s just going for a walk at first, but he finds himself at a frighteningly familiar place.

This is the dock where he learned the fireball jutsu.

The old Uchiha compound has been destroyed. It probably wouldn’t be much more than ruins by now, anyway. So Sasuke takes a seat on the edge of the dock and looks up at the stars to clear his head.

Watching the stars always used to make him forget his troubles on those nights when nightmares would haunt him. It calms him, reminds him of his place in the world. If the universe is so endlessly vast, the actions and thoughts of one little kid don’t mean as much.

Before he knows it, Sasuke is beginning to fall asleep under the stars.

Gently, warm arms wrap around him from behind and pull him into a comforting, familiar chest. Sasuke registers the chakra signature as safe and lets himself relax into the arms of his best friend, his north star, his sun. After all, nothing feels more like home than lying under the stars with Naruto.

_Naruto._

Sasuke sits bolt upright and whirls around to find Naruto blinking at him in surprise, his eyes refracting the moonlight like an animal.

“What are you doing here?” Sasuke snaps.

It must sound a little harsher than it needs to, because Naruto’s expression turns hurt in an instant. Sasuke regrets it the moment the words are out of his mouth, but he can’t take them back now.

“I heard you get up and wanted to see if you were okay,” Naruto explains, and his tone is definitely hurt. “Sorry about earlier, I―”

“Shut up,” Sasuke interrupts, shutting his eyes. He draws his knees up to his chest and says, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does,” Naruto argues. “Sasuke, something’s bothering you.”

He scoots close enough to touch and cups Sasuke’s jaw in his hand. Sasuke can’t help but lean into it; nor does he try to stop himself. Sasuke opens his eyes to look at him. Naruto holds his gaze, unblinking and calm. There’s an unspoken request there, but not an expectation. Still, Sasuke answers.

“Don’t do that again.”

Naruto frowns.

“Don’t take advantage of my emotions like that again,” Sasuke elaborates, his voice firm.

Naruto's eyes widen and his mouth drops into a silent "oh." His hand falls from Sasuke’s cheek and takes his hand instead. He doesn’t need to explain himself, both of them know why he did it and it wouldn’t help anyway. So instead, he just stares into Sasuke’s eyes and apologizes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hmph,” Sasuke snorts, bowing his head with a fond smile. “Usuratonkachi.” He looks up and lets his knees fall until his legs are crossed and he asks, “What do we do now?”

Naruto smiles. “You mean once we prove we’re strong?”

Sasuke nods.

“Hm… Let’s get stronger. I’m going to become the strongest shinobi in the world, and I’m going to make everyone get along.”

Sasuke snorts, but then he looks up at the stars with a thoughtful smile.

“I think I’m going to become hokage,” he says at length, softly. “I want to make sure what happened to my family never happens again.”

“Then you’ll have the strongest bodyguard in the world, ya know!” Naruto exclaims with a blinding grin. “Hokage-sama.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Sasuke smiles at him. “Bodyguard-san.”

Naruto’s blinding grin makes his heart skip a beat.

~+~+~+~

Sasuke wakes with sunlight blinding him and Naruto’s snores in his ear. He sits up with a soft sigh and runs a hand through his hair before he looks over. Yesterday may as well have been a dream except for the fact that Sakura is waiting in the kitchen when Sasuke steps out of their room.

“I’m really disappointed I didn’t make it into the final round!” Sakura tells Itachi at the table, “but I’m glad Naruto won. This makes him chuunin, doesn't it?”

“Indeed,” Itachi replies with a nod, smiling. He looks up as his younger brother comes in and his already fond expression softens further. “Ah, good morning. How did you sleep? Hopefully Naruto didn’t keep you up too late.”

Sasuke gives him the look that deserves and starts to make breakfast. Naruto comes out as the smell of the eggs and toast Sasuke’s making wafts through the apartment. He’s yawning and still dressed in his pajamas, heart-patterned boxers and a plain white t-shirt. His eyes are barely open as he takes a seat at the table and greets Itachi, then Sakura.

Then his eyes widen and he looks at her properly.

“Sakura-chan! What are you doing here?!”

“I came to congratulate you on your victory, Naruto-kun!” she replies lightly, leaning in a little too far for Sasuke liking. “And to ask Itachi-nii to train me today.”

“Then why are you both still here?” Sasuke asks from the kitchen as he seasons the eggs.

“I thought a group training day would be nice,” Itachi replies with a smile Sasuke knows is definitely bad news. “I’ll help all of you fix the things you could have done better. Jiraiya-sama is already making preparations at the training grounds.”

Sasuke picks up the two plates and carries them into the dining room. He sets one down in front of Naruto and takes his seat beside him. He takes the first bite and swallows before he asks Sakura why she’s staring at him.

“Oh!” she exclaims, blinking. “I was just thinking about how Naruto won your fight yesterday.”

Naruto starts choking. Itachi is trying to mask his laughter as a cough, and Sasuke shoots him a glare for it.

“What about it?” Sasuke snaps, glaring.

“Oh, just… Did anything else happen? I notice you two are very close today.”

“Oh, they’re always like this,” Itachi tells her with a dismissive wave. He leans in and lowers his voice to a conspiratorial tone to say, “You should see them when they sleep.”

Sasuke throws a kunai that Itachi dodges, laughing, and it embeds itself in the wall behind him.

“Shut _up_ , aniki!” Sasuke shouts as his face grows hot. “Don’t give her the wrong idea!”

“What wrong idea?” Naruto asks, blinking owlishly. “We do sleep together.”

Sakura starts howling with laughter as Sasuke tackles him to the floor, nearly overturning the table in their scuffle.

A knock at the door has Itachi rising from his seat to get it. He opens it with a peaceful smile and greets Sakura’s sensei warmly.

“Good morning, Kakashi-senpai.”

Sasuke and Naruto pause their fight to look up at them. Sasuke’s right wrist is caught in Naruto’s hand in middair. His left hand is tangled in Naruto’s hair, Naruto’s teeth are lodged in his shoulder hard enough to bruise but not break the skin, and his right hand is pinned agaibst the floor at his side under Sasuke’s knee.

Kakashi startles and blinks once he sees them. “I, um… I came by to escort Naruto-kun to the hokage’s office. I can come back later.”

“No, now’s good!” Naruto shoves Sasuke off him and jumps to his feet to run back into their bedroom, shouting, “I’ll be right back, ya know!”

Sasuke sits up from where he’s been knocked on the floor and considers following Naruto back to their room, but Naruto comes back in a few seconds tying his favorite orange kataginu surcoat with a black obi over his typical black long-sleeved shirt and pants. He shuffles into his sandals at the door and flashes his teammates a thousand-watt smile with a wave over his shoulder before he goes, calling out a goodbye on his way out.

“Aniki,” Sasuke asks from the floor. “What’s the fastest someone’s ever been promoted to chunin?”

Itachi raises his eyebrows and blinks. After a moment, he smiles and says, “I’m sure it was longer than a month.”

Sasuke doesn’t even stop smiling when Itachi and Jiraiya have him running laps through the village with Sakura. When Naruto comes jogging up to them later in a slightly too big chuunin vest Sasuke knows he'll grow into, beaming, his own smile only widens.


	7. How to Become a Sage (by Naruto Uzumaki)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight time-skip; since canon has a two-year gap between Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden, this takes place about halfway in between. The Konoha kids are about 14.

The first time it happens, Naruto isn’t sure he’s not imagining things.

They’re on their first official mission as a team. There is a Konoha spy in the Land of Water, and their mission is to meet her at the border and escort her home before the enemy discovers her true identity. They make it to the rendezvous point easily and wait among the ruins of Uzushio near a faded, crumbling fountain with a red-haired woman painted on the side. They set up camp in the misty twilight to wait until dawn, and Naruto takes the first watch.

However, once his friends fall asleep, he looks up to find silver and gold eyes watching him from the fog.

“Who’s there?” he calls out, pulling a kunai from his bag.

Two figures emerge from the dark on all fours, looking up at him with wary reverence. Their tails are down but their ears are raised, and they keep their heads bowed slightly. Naruto relaxes and slips his kunai away.

“Hey guys,” he greets softly, kneeling before them. “Sorry, we don’t have any food for you.”

_They’re here for you._

Naruto straightens up as Kurama’s deep voice rumbles within him, and the foxes’ ears prick up like they can hear him too. The one with the golden eyes lets out a high-pitched whine. The other sits down and starts to lick its paw.

“Oh!” Naruto exclaims. He sits down in front of them with his hands on his knees and watches them for a moment.

The foxes stare back, unblinking.

“So, uh… What can I do for you, ya know?” Naruto asks, trying to pretend it’s not so weird to be talking to foxes.

Then the silver-eyed one speaks in the voice of a summoning beast, and Naruto nearly jumps out of his skin.

“You are Kurama-sama’s protector,” she―it’s definitely a she―states. “Yet you have not learned the proper ways of the fox.”

“Uh,” Naruto replies eloquently, “uh, no. Nope.”

 _Idiot,_ Kurama chastises, but there’s no venom in his tone. _Remember how Jiraiya summons toads? They’re offering to give you a contract and teach you fox sage mode._

“Hm? Really?” he asks the fox.

“Kurama-sama is very wise,” she says with a nod. “We will wait for you in the heart of Uzushio, Uzumaki-sama.”

She stands up and both foxes bow before they turn and walk away. Only as they turn their backs to him does Naruto realize the silver-eye one has two tails.

“By the way,” she calls, glancing back over her shoulder with a glint in her eye, “you may call me Ume.”

Before Naruto can reply, she and the other fox disappear.

Sage mode, huh?

~+~+~+~

The mission is successful. Of course the mission is successful, when the youngest living Uchiha, hero Itachi's younger brother, and Konoha's Sakura Haruno, Tsunade's disciple, are led by the kyuubi's jinchuuriki, the son of Minato and Kushina.

The spy's identity had been discovered by the time she arrived at the meeting point, but the team sent after her were small fries against Team Seven. Naruto heals one of them enough to learn the name of their boss and find out this incident won't reach the Mizukage before Sasuke dispatches all three of them with his blade and the four Konoha nin head back home.

After delivering their report to Tsunade, who Team Seven was sent to bring home as their first official mission, and walking the spy to the Torture and Investigation unit where she usually works, Naruto tells his teammates to head home and pays his godfather a visit.

Jiraiya didn't feel comfortable moving into his former student's home, he said something about too many memories, so he's taken up residence instead in a corner room of a cheap two-story apartment building. Conveniently, it's located near Konoha's only onsen.

Naruto straightens his shoulders to feel the weight of the chunin vest he's grown into over the last year and runs a hand through his hair―it's grown out quite a bit―before he knocks on the door. A couple of girls walk past down the hall and stare at him, whispering behind their hands. He flashes them a fox-grin that makes them blush and scurry away just before the door opens.

Naruto turns to his old mentor and greets him with a smile. He opens his mouth to speak, but Jiraiya drags him into a hug before he has the chance.

"Um… Jiji? Is everything okay, ya know?"

Jiraiya pulls back to look him in the eye and keeps his hands on Naruto's shoulders. Naruto is almost as tall as he is, now. His expression is grave.

"You look more like your father every day," he admits lowly. "For a second, I thought… Well, nevermind." He steps back and invites Naruto inside with a gesture as he walks over to the kitchen and starts to make them some tea. "You've gotten pretty famous, kid. Your parents would be proud of you." He turns around and hands Naruto a cup with a fond smile. "I know I am."

Naruto swallows the lump that starts to form in his throat and sniffs, accepting the mug with a hoarse "thanks."

They sit down in the living room and Naruto looks at his hands. Jiraiya waits patiently for him to speak.

At length, Naruto raises his head to ask, "Jiji, what is… What's sage mode?"

Jiraiya inhales deeply. Then he smiles. The corners of his eyes crinkle and for the first time in his life, Naruto notices the lines in his face. Jiraiya is getting old, and legend or not, he's mortal.

"It's a secret technique only a few can master," he admits lowly. "Summoning beasts can teach it to mortals and give them the power of nature chakra, but to my knowledge Tsunade and I are the only ones alive who have mastered it."

Naruto takes a sip of his tea as he waits for more.

"There was… another," Jiraiya admits, looking down at his hands. He begins to fiddle with his fingers around the mug in his hands. "Our former teammate, Orochimaru. They were a missing-nin from Konoha who fought alongside us for who knows how many years, but they became obsessed with power and learning every technique they could. Itachi took Orochimaru's bounty a few years ago. I've though about offering to send you to learn, but you would have to make a contract with the toads first."

"That's okay," Naruto replies quickly, "I think Kurama has some teachers in mind."

Jiraiya looks up, startled, but he smiles when he sees the grin on Naruto's face. It's gotten easier to accept the bond his godson has with the beast that killed Minato and Kushina since Naruto told him the kyuubi was being controlled, but that doesn't stop Jiraiya from worrying. Especially now, with Akatsuki hunting down jinchuuriki. He’s been sent to investigate reports of Akatsuki’s headquarters in Amegakure, as well. He leaves tomorrow, and he’s not sure he’ll be coming back. He was waiting for the chance to tell Naruto, but maybe now is not the time.

"When do you leave?" Jiraiya asks with a smile.

Naruto almost knocks over the coffee table in his cheer.

~+~+~+~

Naruto goes to see Tsunade the next day. She gives her gruff blessing and sends him on his way. Naruto hosts a party under the guise of his birthday at home, catered by Ichiraku, and invites all his family and friends: Jiraiya, Itachi, Sasuke and Sakura, the other genin their age and a kid called Konohamaru, the third hokage's grandson. After everyone goes home, Naruto takes Sasuke and Sakura on a walk.

They ask him where they're going a few times on the way, always receiving the same vague answer.

"Someplace special!" Naruto replies, beaming. "Come on!"

He grabs their wrists and pulls them through the village, racing between vendors and civilians at a safe (but still fun) speed. When they finally reach the Hokage Monument, Naruto calls out a race to the top as his skin turns gold and Sasuke barely manages to keep up with him. Sakura beats them both with a wire-strung kunai she throws to the top, and meets them at the top with her arms crossed and a smirk.

"Heh," Naruto laughs, taking a seat on the edge of the cliffs.

Sasuke sits down on his right and Sakura on his left. The three of them stare out at the village for a long moment, smiling at the sea of lights and all the life that is their home.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," Naruto announces softly, keeping his gaze fixed below as he swings his legs. His smile turns sad.

"What?" Sakura asks, blinking at him in surprise.

Naruto raises his gaze to the sky and carefully interlaces his fingers with Sasuke's. He still doesn't look at either of them.

"There's a fox village in Uzushio," he tells them. "They offered to teach me sage mode."

Sakura gapes at him, speechless, but Sasuke squeezes his hand and follows his gaze to the city.

"Alright."

Naruto blinks and looks at him at last.

Sasuke bows his head and continues, "I woke up when you called out that night."

Naruto nods slowly. Of course.

"Sorry teme, Sakura. You'll have to keep training without me for a while."

Sakura punches his shoulder lightly, for her, and grins at him. "We'll both be chunin by the time you get back," she promises.

Naruto rubs his arm with a grimace and manages to smile through it back at her. "I can't wait, ya know."

~+~+~+~

Naruto tries to slip out quietly in the morning long before the sunrise. If somehow the village finds out before he leaves, some of his fans might stop him from leaving.

However, when he reaches the gate, he finds Sasuke and Itachi already waiting.

"Did you really think you could leave without saying goodbye, Naruto-chan?" Itachi teases with a smile, his arms crossed.

Naruto smiles sheepishly and scratches the back of his neck as he approaches. Sasuke steps forward and offers him something in a little box. It takes Naruto a moment to realize it's a bento.

"This is what my brother and I ate when we fled the village," he admits. He turns his head away and stuff his hands in his pockets once Naruto takes it. "It should stay good for a few days."

Naruto looks at it, then at his older brother and… and at Sasuke, and gives them both a hug. Sasuke grunts, but Itachi just lets out a musical laugh and lightly wraps his arm around Naruto's shoulders in return.

When Naruto pulls back, there are tears in his eyes.

"I love you," he tells them shakily.

"Travel safe, Naruto-kun," Itachi replies with a smile. He squeezes Naruto's shoulder with his hand before he gives his other little brothers a smile and walks away.

Sasuke looks at Naruto and takes his hand. Naruto's heart skips a beat as Sasuke leans in, closing his eyes. Naruto holds his breath and closes his too, waiting until he feels Sasuke's soft, cold lips against his cheek. Then Sasuke's breath in his ear to whisper something before he pulls away with a mischievous smirk and dances away with a wave. Naruto touches his cheek lightly and waves back, dazed. A few moments later, he turns and starts off toward Uzushio.

 _Come back soon, usuratonkachi,_ Sasuke had said. _I’ll need my bodyguard._


	8. How to Pray (by Kakashi Hatake)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm uploading two days in a row which is rather unusual but I just finished the whole fic and I'm eager to finish uploading it so I can stop getting confused around what my WIPs are. There are going to be a couple of fics I'll start uploading as soon as I finish with this one so stay tuned if you like Tokyo Ghoul or BnHA!

Kakashi would never say Konoha is boring. But between the high-powered sparring matches between and bet on by drunk shinobi, the fifth hokage included, and the occasional attempt at espionage by another village, there are some moments when the whole world is still. At night, mostly, between two and five AM. Sometimes he spends that time reading. Other nights, when he manages to fall asleep only to be awoken by another nightmare from his past, he sits out in his open window to watch the stars.

This is one of the latter nights, where he sits on the windowsill with a cup of tea to steady his shaking, bloodsoaked hands. Jiraiya’s death shook the village, and Kakashi asked Itachi to allow him to be the one to tell Naruto. The memorial was a few months ago, but sometimes it’s still hard to believe. Kakashi has always been shocked by how everything can go on despite the loss of someone so important in the lives of others, but so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. He’s still trying to figure out how to tell the kid.

The world is quiet and peaceful right now. Someone in the apartment across the street is watching television and the audio filters out distantly through the screen of their open window. There's another sleepless shinobi smoking on the balcony of a top-floor apartment, Asuma, who just got out of the hospital after his team had a brush with Akatsuki. In the alleyway below, something silver prowls through the shadows and looks up, holds Kakashi's startled gaze for a moment with black, starlight-reflecting eyes, and jumps up.

Kakashi falls backward into his apartment with a kunai raised to the throat of a large, _heavy_ , six-tailed silver fox.

But it's not… snarling. And it's claws aren't even touching him.

"Are you Kakashi Hatake of Konoha?" the fox asks in a low voice, keeping him pinned down with heavy, strong paws.

"Who's askin'?" Kakashi replies with narrowed eyes.

The fox steps away and sits neatly in front of him. It's bigger than a human and he wonders briefly how it fit through the window before he decides he has greater concerns. The fox blocks the moonlight from the window with his back, illuminating it with a silvery edge.

His eyes still have stars caught in them.

"The little Uzumaki sent me to bear his message," the fox states calmly as Kakashi stands up. There is an authority to his voice that speaks of urgency.

Kakashi blinks. Itachi told him Naruto left to study with foxes, but he wasn't really sure what that meant until now. Still, whether this beast is a friend or foe, his heart is racing at the sight. It's been fifteen years since the demon fox destroyed Konoha and took some of its best. It's been fifteen years since he, a young ANBU, was forced to aid the evacuation of citizens who cried and begged to help their family and friends in the battle. It's been fifteen years, and he can't stand before a fox like this one without shaking.

"Let's hear it," Kakashi replies. He puts away his kunai and takes a seat on the edge of his bed, keeping a wary eye on the fox in front of him.

 _Naruto sent him,_ Kakashi reminds himself. _You're safe._

"Gaara-sama is in danger," the fox states as if it's the daily news. "Akatsuki have taken him."

Kakashi tenses and grips his knees. "The Kazekage?" he murmurs, stunned. "When?"

The fox snorts and tosses his head. "A mere hour ago, Hatake-san. I am not known as swift-footed Tsubaki for nothing."

Kakashi heard Naruto would be in Uzushio, but that's at least a three-day trip at max speed for a shinobi.

"Thank you for this, Tsubaki-san," Kakashi tells him with a nod. "I'll bring this to the hokage."

The fox stands and bows his head in response, but says one last thing before he goes.

"Naruto-san is busy with his studies," Tsubaki states. "He cannot travel unless he must. Do you understand?" The fox gives him a piercing look.

"Yes," Kakashi replies, standing to bow to the fox. "Thank you for taking care of him."

The fox makes a pleased sounds in the back of his throat before he turns, brushes Kakashi with the tips of his five tails, and leaves the way he came. By the time Kakashi makes it to the window to head for the hokage's office, the only sign of the fox is a silver light streaking far away across the sky.

~+~+~+~

The Suna guards are more than a little suspicious when Konoha’s Team Seven (version 2: minus Naruto, plus Itachi) and Team Gai arrive before the message should have even reached their village. Kakashi waves off their questions with a vague explanation about a Konoha nin hearing the news and sending his summons. They left the morning after the kidnapping and arrived three days later.

They find the Kazekage and Akatsuki in a cave. At a glance, Sakura says Gaara is unconscious but still breathing, and it’s unlikely they’ve extracted the tailed beast yet. Kakashi breathes a sigh of relief, but he hardly has time to do so before Sasori, Deidara, and Kisame appear and begin their fight to the death.

Guy and his team take on the shark in the river below the cave. Kakashi sends Itachi to help them with the promise that two sharingan users and Tsunade’s disciple will be more than enough to deal with these two. Itachi gives him a nod and runs back, leaping out of the cave with Susano’o burning to life around him. Sakura, Sasuke, and Kakashi turn to face their opponents.

“Sasuke, Sakura,” Kakashi commands lowly, “I’ll leave Sasori to you.”

“Alright,” Sasuke replies simply, readying the katana that his brother gave him as a gift to celebrate his promotion with his glowing red eyes fixed on one of the most dangerous missing-nin in the five nations.

Sakura, at his side, raises her metal-plated gloves with the same determined look she wore before she won her second chance at the chunin exams, taking out Rock Lee with poise only Itachi Uchiha could have taught her.

Kakashi steps away with a smile and knows in his heart that if he dies here, the future of Konoha is in good hands.

~+~+~+~

Gaara lives.

Itachi weakens Kisame with Tsukuyomi and a few softly exchanged words that make Kisame bow his head and give up. Itachi won’t say what image Kisame saw, but it must have been horrific to have the effect it did.

Kakashi is forever grateful Itachi is on their side.

Sasori was easy enough to kill with Chidori, but Sakura and Sasuke’s fight went on a little longer.

By the time his students finally kill Sasori of the Red Sand, Sakura has all but exhausted her chakra reserves and her arm looks broken. Sasuke looks ready to fall over from exhaustion. Kakashi can’t help but realize how much easier their fight would have been with Naruto by their side, but he’s grateful they won at all.

Perhaps it’s time for him to consider nominating them for the position of jounin.

Sakura stumbles forward and kneels beside the Kazekage to examine him. Kakashi has half a mind to tell her to take a break, but he knows all too well she might be the only one who can tell if something’s seriously wrong.

Luckily, she smiles weakly when she looks up and gives them a thumbs up. Gaara is fine.

“He has bruising in his ribs and residual metal-based poison in his blood, but it doesn’t seem like it was intended to kill. They probably just wanted to incapacitate him,” she states calmly, rising to her feet. “Still, we should get him back to Suna and―”

“Sakura,” Sasuke interrupts, and that’s unusual enough in itself to draw their attention.

They look over to find him swaying with a hand on his side. He’s smiling, but his eyes are closed and his eyebrows are crinkle together in pain.

Blood begins to pool under his hand and he rasps, “I-I think I’m―Something’s wrong.”

He falls.

His eyes roll back in his head and the blood comes faster once his hand comes away. Sakura races to his side and tries to staunch the bleeding, screaming at Kakashi to grab Gaara and take him back to Suna and tell the doctors to ready a bed. She tells him to get Itachi up here to help her carry Sasuke, and Kakashi obeys in a dream.

Once, when his original team first formed, he asked them what they wanted to be when they grow up.

Sakura’s goal was to be able to protect her loved ones.

Kakashi hasn’t even asked Sasuke what his goals are.

 _Well,_ he thinks, narrowing his eyes in determination as he rushes back to Suna, carrying the Kazekage on his shoulders. _I just have to make sure I get the chance to._

His arrival does nothing short of cause a panic. Gaara is tended to by a poison expert named Chiyo, and the Suna nin will have to forgive him if he’s a little more worried about his dying student than their unconscious kage.

Sakura and Itachi come roaring in with Sasuke lying pale and sweating in Itachi’s arms. Sakura barks orders at terrified Suna medic-nin who still obey her with shaking hands, Itachi lays his younger brother on a ready bed gently, and if he has tears in his eyes, Kakashi doesn’t blame him. Chiyo walks in at some point and begins helping her figure out an antidote for the poison, and Kakashi is sent out with a command to send for Naruto.

He doesn’t waste a moment in summoning his fastest ninken, Uuei, and asking him to go find Naruto in Uzushio and tell him Sasuke is wounded in Sunagakure. Uuei, for his part, nods and takes off without a word, running at full speed.

Kakashi hopes against hope the dog reaches Naruto before it’s too late.


	9. How to Accidentally Reveal Your Identity to Your Enemy (by Tsubaki the Swift)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is written from Tsubaki's perspective! I love him very much.

When the Uzumaki first arrived, Tsubaki was hardly impressed. He’s a loud-mouthed brat with a reckless streak and he trusts too easily in creatures who could rip him apart at the limps and eat him alive. Tsubaki would be lying if he said he didn’t question why Kurama-sama wants them to teach this idiot fox sage mode, but he kept his mouth shut with the consolation that the kid’s failure could result in him turning into a statue forever.

The only problem was, the kid didn’t fail.

Sure, he didn’t master it in a day or anything, but he’s _good_. He got the meditation down pretty easily, like he’s been practicing for years, and with Kurama-sama’s coaching, he’s unstoppable.

Foxes are distrusting by nature. Some of them are just shy, but others have spent too long being hunted by humans to trust them too easily. Some of the younger foxes, namely Ume and her brother Hinagiku, are too young to remember the age of terror but know better than to approach a human unless they have to. The foxes used to live in peace across the world, but hunting nearly drove them to extinction. Only in Uzushio were they revered and respected, but the hunt followed them here. Now the kind ones are dead, and the foxes are all that remain among the rubble.

If Naruto-san weren’t one of the last living descendants of the kind ones, Tsubaki knows not even Kurama could have convinced the foxes to have approached him at all.

Despite this, despite the fact that Tsubaki and the older ones watch him from afar and give him pointers occasionally only because of Kurama-sama, he still smiles at them like they’re friends and treats them like his family. When the youngest play tricks on him or hide his things, Naruto doesn’t get mad. He plays along. He plays tricks right back, and he’s as good at it as them.

Tsubaki wanted to hate him. He wanted to prove that Naruto is nothing more than another prideful, lying human who wouldn’t hesitate to kill them. Oh, he wanted to, but then Tsubaki began to see just why Kurama-sama decided to trust him.

When Tsubaki begrudgingly agreed to teach the brat how to gather nature chakra (only because he got to smack the kid every time he starts gathering too much), he expected Naruto to get tired after a few hours and call it a day. But the kid didn’t. He ended up falling asleep against Tsubaki’s side in the starlight again and again only to eat and start again the next day until he finally falls asleep with his eyelids shimmering gold, and Tsubaki can’t even hit him for lying on him when the kid trusts a beast like him so much.

Tsubaki stays by the kid’s side almost constantly after that. Some of his siblings tease him for it, but Tsubaki just growls and reminds them of various embarrassing things they’ve done.

One night, after a long day in the forest teaching the kid to hunt, Tsubaki takes him to where the kind ones’ library once stood. He helps Naruto dig through the rubble and carry out stacks of scrolls and books about his old family’s culture, their lives, and the sealing techniques that scared the other villages so much they were killed for knowing them. Tsubaki helps him take the remains of his mother’s culture back to the crumbling building he has taken up residence in, with vines and root hammocks growing inside it in which the foxes and now Naruto sleep. It’s their den, their home, and Tsubaki lies with him until morning using his foxfire to give him light to read by.

Naruto begins practicing his clan’s sealing techniques the very next day. He doesn’t understand the books very well, but so many of the other texts are written in drawings and descriptions of how it feels and strange analogies instead of theory. The kind ones didn’t understand the words as easily either.

Naruto manages to catch Ume in a gold-chain trap after just a few days. They hunt down a doe to celebrate and begin the feast in the early afternoon.

During meals, the foxes used to speak little, but Naruto has brought more cheer into their lives than they’ve had in centuries. They laugh and talk until their feast is picked clean and the fire dies down. When Naruto springs to his feet with an expression of alarm, Tsubaki is the first to rise.

“Something’s wrong,” Naruto states blatantly, staring off in the direction of his village.

“I will accompany you,” Tsubaki offers, rising to his feet so that Naruto can rest his hand in his mane.

Naruto has better instincts than most humans, and Tsubaki would be the last to question him now. So Naruto seals the fox summoning scroll, which is rather small and light compared to others, and the remains of his family’s library in a small scroll that he tucks into the old scroll-keeping belt strapped around his wrist (he also found some of his clan’s old clothes and tools; the Uzushio spiral is embroidered on all of them), and climbs on Tsubaki’s back. The other foxes watch silently, waiting and saying their silent goodbyes.

“Where to?” Tsubaki growls.

“Suna,” Naruto tells him firmly. “Hurry.”

“Roger.” Tsubaki rises into the air as his paws light up with fox-fire, and they streak toward the village in the night.

They reach Sunagakura in three hours.

Just outside the village, they find a small ninja dog with bandages wrapped around its body running toward Uzushio. Naruto asks him to land in front of it.

The dog looks up at them through sullen eyes and gives his message.

“Sasuke is wounded,” the hound says.

Naruto doesn’t need any more reason than that to ride Tsubaki into the heart of a foreign village, stop in the middle of the street outside the hospital, roll off his back and race inside. Tsubaki looks at their surroundings. The sun is beginning to set over the village, casting it in a warm glow. Some of the onlookers seem frightened, but mostly they just look startled. Tsubaki pads up to the doors of the hospital and takes a seat right across the entryway, effectively blocking anyone from coming near and getting in Naruto’s way. It’s nice to see humans be scared of a fox, for once. Maybe times have changed after all.

“Who was that?” someone asks in a whisper, drawing Tsubaki’s eye to a young kunoichi standing off to his left.

“More importantly, is that a summon?!” a young man beside her asks.

Both of them are older than the boy, but far less interesting. Tsubaki yawns and settles down for a long, restful nap.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like he’ll be receiving one any time soon.

The door opens behind him a boy dressed in green trips over him. The kid lands sprawling in the dust a few feet away and sits up, coughing, only to turn around and yelp when he sees Tsubaki. Tsubaki, to his credit, just stares back calmly and waits for the bushy-browed boy to speak.

“Um… Are y-you Ts-Tsubaki-san?” the boy stammers.

Tsubaki still isn’t sure he wants to speak with these humans, so he merely bows his head in acknowledgement.

The boy stands up and dusts himself off before he sweeps into a deep, respectful bow. Tsubaki raises his brow in surprise. Never since the fall of Uzushio has a human greeted him like this.

Tsubaki stands.

The boy gulps. He’s trembling faintly, but he doesn’t move when Tsubaki approaches him. He catches his colossal figure in the boy’s wide, dark eyes, his silvery-white coat shimmering like needles, and smiles. It must look more like a snarl to the boy, because he looks a little sick.

“Are you the Uzumaki’s comrade?” Tsubaki inquires.

His voice rumbles from his chest with amusement, but so often humans mistake foxes’ emotions for a threat. This boy must have been warned, since he doesn’t panic.

“Y-yes,” he answers, drawing himself up to his full―meager―height. “Naruto-kun asked me to keep you company.”

Tsubaki lets out a high-pitched laugh at that. “The boy thinks I need a babysitter, hah?” he roars, flicking his tails in amusement. “What a very _him_ thing to do. Very well, little human. Come sit with me. It’s been a long time since I spoke with one who was not an Uzumaki.”

Tsubaki resumes his seat at the front of the hospital and waits for the little human to settle down beside him. He kneels at a short distance and Tsubaki regards him calmly. Maybe, just maybe, it could be time to give humans a chance again.

“What is your name?”

The boys startles. “I’m Rock Lee, Tsubaki-san.”

“Hmph. Tell me about your relationship to the little Uzumaki, Lee-san. We foxes only get to see a side of him, you know.”

So the kid smiles, relieved, and begins to tell him about the Naruto Uzumaki he knows. He says the kid showed up out of nowhere with the last of the Uchiha and Jiraiya, a legendary shinobi, to take the chunin exams when he wasn’t even a genin. Rock Lee talks about how Naruto broke the world record for the shortest amount of time spent as a genin and won the chunin exams on his first try, how he beat Sasuke Uchiha by distracting him with a kiss in the semifinal round, how the two of them were inseparable before Naruto left the village again. Lee says Naruto didn’t tell anyone except his family he was leaving, and most of them didn’t know where he went. He says Naruto is one of the youngest jinchuuriki in history to master his tailed beast and he’s the most popular guy in Konoha.

Tsubaki fixes him in a glare that shuts him up long enough for the fox to say, “I didn’t ask for his accomplishments. I want to know what kind of idiot he is outside the den. And if I hear one more story about Sasuke Uchiha, I’ll tear my own ears off. The kid doesn’t shut up about him.”

“Oh.” Lee blinks. “I… I don’t know. He trains a lot, and he takes a lot of youthful pride in his accomplishments! I heard he got into a fight with a civilian once because he said something bad about Naruto’s family, but sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s just a rumor from a story when it comes to him.”

“Sounds like him,” Tsubaki snorts. He lays his chin on his paws and lets his eyes close. “So he’s unusual to you humans as well, hm?”

“Hardly!” Lee exclaims, startling the fox into cracking open one black eye. “Naruto-kun is the most youthful of my comrades, but he is hardly unusual!”

Then the kid goes off about his own teammates, and his classmates, and Tsubaki decides it’s time to rest. Naruto would have sent off a signal by now anyway if his precious bastard were dead. So Tsubaki lets the kid talk about a weapons expert called Tenten, a brave forgotten genius by the name of Neji, and six more kids like them with their own quirks and specialties.

Maybe Tsubaki can see why Naruto misses Konoha sometimes, even if he doesn't quite call it home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeisanillusionlifeisahologrambuygoldbye!!


	10. How to Save Your Family (by Sakura Haruno)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this time, I took a break for a while and wanted to cut it off here. Enjoy!

Sasuke is dying.

Sasuke is dying, which is precisely why Sakura is hardly surprised when the only person who dares to break her order that only necessary medical staff enter the operation room, is Naruto.

She and Chiyo, Suna’s poison and antidote specialist, work together in near silence to save her friend and teammate. She banished Kakashi to send for Naruto not long after they started, but even so she expected it to take at least a day for Kakashi’s summon to reach him. Nonetheless, when the door slams open with enough force to crack the wall a mere three hours after the operation began, she doesn’t even bother to look up.

“How is he?” Naruto’s calm, gentle voice asks.

He steps up to her side and she spares a glance out of the corner of her eye. His clothes are different. The old gold and black outfits have been replaced with dusty, ancient robes of red and black, with golden accents and glittering scarlet gemstones. There’s something leaner in his face that speaks of a proper diet rather than ramen and stir fry and his hair is even longer than when he left. His eyes are warm and concerned as he focuses on Sasuke, who is panting with cold sweat beading on his forehead.

“Bad,” Sakura admits, focused on using her chakra to keep the poison away from Sasuke’s heart. “Can you use—?”

“Yeah,” Naruto cuts her off, already laying his hand on top of hers on Sasuke’s bare chest.

She feels her heart skip a beat before his chakra begins flowing through her, warm and comforting like sunshine and fire. His nails elongate into claws, but he doesn’t even blink. He keeps his scarlet eyes on Sasuke’s face and watches, waiting, as he tries to use the kyuubi’s chakra to negate the poison. It reacts with the poison, but this time it doesn’t make it fizzle out. The poison grows stronger, multiplying, spreading. It becomes harder to control, like ice turned to water.

Sasuke jerks, spits up blood, and Naruto recoils. He’s staring at his hand in surprise and fear, but Sakura doesn’t have time to worry about him. The poison is spreading faster now and it’s taking every ounce of her willpower to keep it from killing her teammate while she waits for Chiyo to return with the antidote. Sasuke begins to seize, and she forces him onto his side.

“I… I made it worse,” Naruto breathes. “I’m… I’m sorry, I… I thought that would work. It worked before. Why…?”

“We don’t have time to worry about that, Naruto,” Sakura warns through gritted teeth, holding down her other useless teammate. “This is a metal-based poison, your chakra must have reacted differently with it.”

Naruto falls silent for a moment. Sakura is about to tell him to go wait outside, but he steps forward again and sits on the windowsill. He crosses his legs and closes his eyes, placing his hands in his lap. Just when Sakura is about to ask what he’s doing, Sasuke’s eyes twitch behind his eyelids. His lips move, mumbling something. She only understands one word, and it’s Naruto’s name.

~+~+~+~

Sasuke's world is dark. He's lying in a shallow pool of water, perfectly dry. The moon and stars are the only source of light and they glitter in the sky above. He stares at them for a long moment. There's something in his blood. Something hot, something bad. He's dying. A searing pain makes him jolt and he rolls onto his side to vomit.

When he sits up, he's greeted by a familiar pair of bright blue eyes.

"Naruto?"

Naruto smiles, but it's not his usual thousand-watt grin or his sly fox smile. He looks sadder, a little older, and maybe just a touch wiser. He's seated a few meters away, floating perfectly still above the water. Sasuke drags himself into a sitting position to stare at him while he catches his breath. Naruto moves into a standing position and strides toward him silently, graceful as a fox, to sit in front of him in the black water.

Sasuke laughs once, breathless, and whispers, "I missed you, dobe."

~+~+~+~

Chiyo enters the room and pauses in surprise when she sees Naruto seated in the window. Sakura calls the old woman’s attention back to the task at hand by asking if the antidote is ready, and Chiyo steps forward with a nod. She places the mixture on a table and begins to drip it into Sasuke’s mouth. Sakura senses the poison come into contact with it and slowly fade, throbbing. It’s still in his system, but it’s no longer dangerous. When she finally thinks it’s safe enough, Sakura withdraws. She thanks Chiyo softly and the two of them turn to let Sasuke rest.

As she walks out the door, Sakura looks back once to see a smile on Sasuke’s lips as he murmurs, “I missed you, dobe.”

Sakura shuts the door gently and walks down to the lobby with a small, sad smile. Kakashi is waiting for her by the doors, bouncing his leg with his elbows resting on his knees. He relaxes when he sees her and takes out his book with his usual impassive expression and lays a hand on the head of the dog at his side. There’s a group of people gathered by the windows and doors. Sakura approaches her teacher to ask him what all that’s about, but she catches a glimpse through the crowd and gapes.

On the other side of the door, blocking the entrance, is a giant silver fox. Leaning on its side, talking animatedly with his hands waving in the air, is Rock Lee.

Sakura might faint.

“He’s Naruto’s summon,” Kakashi explains cheerfully.

How he can say that so unfazed is beyond her.

“I assume, since you’re out here, Sasuke’s alright?” a low voice asks from behind her.

Sakura whirls around to find Itachi towering over her, his eyes dark and menacing. She’s come to recognize that as his, “I’m concerned and want the full truth” stare, and smiles.

“Sasuke’s resting upstairs. Naruto’s with him.”

Itachi’s expression shifts briefly to surprise before he frowns and asks, “Did he heal the poison?”

“No,” Sakura admits, her voice firm. “His chakra made it worse, but Sasuke’s fine. I think…” It seems absurd, but there’s no other way to explain it so Sakura bites her lip and continues. “I think Naruto’s talking to him in his dream.”

Itachi startles. Kakashi puts his book down and sits up.

“I take it his training went well, then,” Kakashi asks, amusement in his tone.

“We’ll have to ask him later,” Sakura replies calmly. “I don’t think either of them is going to wake up any time soon.”

The crowd of people disperses suddenly and the doors open. Lee walks in and comes up to her, the giant fox in tow. As Sakura looks closer, she realizes it has six tails and black eyes with stars caught within. Its ears twitch as it approaches her.

“Sakura-chan!” Lee calls, waving. “Is Sasuke alright?”

“Yes,” she replies weakly, staring at the fox in awe.

“So you’re the pretty Sakura-kun Naruto never shuts up about,” the fox greets. He fixes Kakashi and Itachi in his gaze. “You two are the brat’s teachers, correct?”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you again, Tsubaki-san,” Kakashi replies with a bow. “Thank you for your warning the other night.”

“Hm,” the fox growls, narrowing his eyes. “The kid’s got good instincts, I’ll give him that.”

“Aw, Tsubaki-chan, that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me!”

The fox jerks his head up to stare past Sakura’s shoulder and bares his teeth. Naruto is walking toward them with a grin, supporting Sasuke with his shoulder and arm. Sasuke still looks half-dead and he certainly shouldn’t be out of bed, but he’s smiling too, if weakly.

“Oh-ho! So your precious bastard is alright after all!” Tsubaki calls, and Sakura might call that tone cheerful if it weren’t half a growl.

Naruto just laughs and helps Sasuke into a chair, where Sasuke leans back to catch his breath. He’s still pale and his eyes are still hazy, but he’s alright. That’s enough for now.

For the first time since they were genin, Sakura takes a moment to look at the three of them. They started out strong and they’ve only gotten stronger. Sasuke mastered the mangekyo sharingan the day Naruto left, and Sakura has been studying ways to transfer his and Itachi’s eyes to give them both eternal mangekyo. Naruto was the strongest of them to begin with, but Sasuke’s been practicing his kenjutsu and Sakura is close to mastering the Strength of a Hundred seal.

They’re still kids, but they’ve certainly grown up.

"So, when was somebody going to tell me Konoha's Team Seven were sent to save me?" The Kazekage walks toward them, still a little pale and flanked by his siblings, who stand a little closer to him than would be necessary if he were really alright.

"Gaara!" Naruto greets with a beaming smile. "Long time, no see, ya know!"

For the first time Sasuke's seen, the Kazekage smiles. He walks up to Naruto and pulls him aside slightly, but Sakura can still just hear them.

"Thank you for what you said to me after the exams, Naruto," Gaara tells him lowly. "I took your advice. Killer Bee was… an interesting teacher."

Naruto's grin turns sly and he replies, "Yeah, I'm glad you're alright, ya know."

"Better than ever, thanks to you."

They exchange a look that makes Sakura turn away, feeling as though she's intruded on something private. Then Gaara murmurs something she can't hear, and Sakura glances back to find Naruto red as Sasuke's favorite fruit and stammering a denial.

Sasuke, seated slightly closer, starts coughing violently with a smile on his lips warmer than Sakura has seen since their best friend left.


	11. How to Grieve (by Naruto Uzumaki)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess I'm just as impatient as you all because I've decided to upload the rest of this tonight. :/
> 
> Look at me forgetting chapter titles again.

Naruto has always been confident. He's always been bold and courageous, sometimes to his detriment, like when he first met Tsunade. But he's also not used to thinking about his actions before he follows through on them, which is why he doesn't feel quite so brave now.

He's been thinking about this decision since he started his sage training. It started as an idea, like all good plans do. It quickly grew into a daydream, and only a really now, with Sasuke just a few feet away and Gaara's soft, teasing words on his mind, is it beginning to become even a possible reality.

_You knew, didn't you? You two have a bond few lovers do, and don't try to tell me you're anything less than that._

Naruto left shortly after that to get a (very late) dinner and catch up with his friends and Kakashi. They went to a noodle shop with the kazekage and his escort, which led to a full meal on the house. After eating nothing but meat and some edible plants for the last year or so, a good salty ramen dish is like heaven. After they leave the restaurant and Naruto begins talking about finding a place to stay, Tsubaki growls something about going off to hunt before he leaps away into the night. Naruto watches him streak away across the sky with a smile until the fox disappears.

"So, you finished your training," Sasuke asks low in his ear, just beside him.

Naruto hums his assent and turns toward him. Sasuke has grown a little taller, but not as much as Naruto. His hair is in its usual bun, but his clothes are newer and more durable than his old yukatas. He wears another sword across his back now, a rectangular black one with a silver line down the center of its sheath. His face is more lean, his eyes sharper, but his lips look even softer than they did the day of the chuunin exams.

Everything between them has always been messy and haphazard at best. They’ve fought against and for, insulted and comforted, loved and hated each other to no end. Why should that stop now?

Naruto turns away. He rubs the back of his neck and looks around, opening his mouth to say something, anything, before he realizes they're alone. His heart is pounding. He wipes his sweaty palms against his thighs and is about to try again when Sasuke grabs his wrist and pulls him down an alleyway. Naruto finds his back pressed against a cold, dry wall as the night dessert air breathes a chill down his spine and Sasuke's hot, dry lips press against his own. Sasuke's hand alights on his jaw and Naruto shuts his eyes. He brushes Sasuke's bangs aside and tilts his head to lean into the kiss. He puts his other hand on Sasuke's hip to pull him in, deepening it. Sasuke grabs his arm and the hand that used to be able to wrap around his bicep now barely spans the width of it. They pull apart for a moment to appreciate each other and catch their breath, staring into each other's eyes.

"Wow," Naruto laughs, breathless.

His face feels hot and something else does, too. From the slightly painful thing jabbing his thigh, Sasuke's having the same problem.

"Let's find a place to sleep tonight," Sasuke suggests, pulling away slowly.

Naruto beams and takes his hand as they walk out of the alleyway.

They find an inn down the street and get a room for two. They're not kids anymore, but for some reason the night feels a little easier with a best friend in your arms and a goodnight kiss tingling on your lips; even if you've been sleeping with giant foxes for so long.

~+~+~+~

The next morning, Naruto wakes with his arm caught numb under Sasuke's head, with Sasuke himself shirtless and curled into his side. He’s drooling slightly, which Naruto finds endearing more than anything. He smiles softly and sits up, careful not to disturb Sasuke as he slips out of bed. The hot sunlight is beginning to peer through the blinds of the dusty hotel room they found and lights up Naruto's side of the bed in a warm, bright glow. He peels off the t-shirt he went to bed in and heart-patterned boxers as he turns on the shower and waits for the water to warm up. When it's finally warm enough to stand under but not hot enough to steam, he steps in and lets his eyes close as the tension from yesterday finally melts from his body. Kurama has been quiet, but now he finally rises to the surface and speaks.

" _When are you going to tell him?_ "

Naruto huffs a soft laugh as he rakes his fingers through his hair to rinse out the shampoo.

"I will, don't worry," he replies with a nervous attempt at playful nonchalance.

" _You can't put this off forever, Naruto. The Uchiha brat needs to know._ "

Naruto lets his arms fall to his sides and sighs, "I know. It's just hard, ya know? I don't want to leave him again."

"Leave who again?"

Naruto yelps and almost slips. He peeks around the curtain with a petulant scowl at Sasuke, who is leaning calmly against the doorframe with his arms crossed, dressed in nothing but dark sweatpants riding low on his hips. Naruto resists the urge to say something stupid and wrenches his gaze back up to hold his best friend's gaze.

"Can I at least finish my shower first, bastard?"

"Fine," Sasuke replies with an eye roll in a tone that he tries to make sound bored, but Naruto knows he's impatient and worried. "I'll wait for you outside."

Sasuke leaves, Naruto hears the door shut, and he finishes the rest of his shower as quickly as possible, forgoing conditioner and barely drying off before he throws on his clothes, still tying his obi as he steps into the street. Sasuke is leaning against the wall outside with his eyes closed, one knee popped.

Since not thinking too much has always worked best for him before, Naruto blurts out what he needs to say while he still has the courage.

"I'm leaving the village."

Sasuke looks up at him impassively, but there's confusion in the slight crinkle between his eyebrows and displeasure in the downturn of his lips.

Naruto is glad, after all this time, he hasn't forgotten how to read Sasuke.

"I'm not going back," Naruto continues softer, watching him carefully. “I mean, of course I’ll still come back to visit, after all you and Jiji and Sakura still live there, but I don’t really have a reason to stay there. I never did.”

Sasuke blinks once. He pushes himself off the wall smoothly and strides forward until he's barely inches away. Naruto gulps.

Sasuke leans in, touches his shoulder lightly with his fingertips and whispers in his ear, "Is that an offer or a request?"

Naruto startles. Sasuke pulls back enough to look him in the eye, waiting for a response. Naruto blinks.

"A request?" he answers hesitantly. "Do you…? Are you going to tell someone? What does that―"

"Dobe," Sasuke replies, rolling his eyes again. "I'm asking if you want me to come with you."

Naruto's eyes go wide. "Oh!" he exclaims. Frankly, the idea never occurred to him. “Why would you want to come with me?” he asks. At Sasuke’s raised eyebrow, he quickly adds, “I mean, I thought you wanted to become hokage! It’s your home, ya know? You and Itachi wanted to change things.”

"You really are thick," Sasuke taunts, but a small smile plays at the corner of his lips and he turns away to hide it. "Why would I want to go back to Konoha when I only feel at home with you?"

Naruto blinks. He blinks once. Then twice. Then Sasuke's words register, and he nearly splits his face with his grin. He reaches out and pulls Sasuke into him, in a hug that turns into a kiss, and Sasuke pulls back. He pushes Naruto back with his hand on Naruto’s chest and turns away, blushing from the tips of his ears to his neck. Naruto keeps grinning and tries to pull him back in despite Sasuke’s mumbled insults and half-hearted attempts to pull away, but a cheerful, familiar voice has them both jerking their heads up and pulling away.

They turn to see Kakashi walking toward them with his hand raised in greeting, his eyes smiling.

“Yo,” Kakashi calls when he gets closer.

“Good morning,” Sasuke greets coolly, leaning against a post on the porch.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto says, putting on a strained grin as he rubs the back of his neck. “How’s it going?”

“I need to talk to you,” Kakashi sighs.

His hands drop into his pockets as he lowers his head, and Naruto knows immediately that something is wrong. Kakashi steps under the shade of the porch and stands facing them. When he raises his chin again, his eyes are grim.

“Naruto, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while.” He glances away and continues lowly, “I asked Itachi to give me the chance to tell you, and I wanted to say it in person. I know you and Jiraiya were close.”

“He raised me,” Naruto says automatically. His eyes widen. “Did something happen?”

Finally, Kakashi holds his gaze. “Yes,” he answers honestly. “After you began your training, he was sent to investigate reports of Akatsuki’s headquarters being in Amegakure.”

Naruto’s heart leaps into his throat. Sasuke raises his head then, his eyes going wide in shock. He reaches out and surreptitiously takes Naruto’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze as he rounds on Kakashi.

“Don’t you dare tell me you waited this long to tell him,” Sasuke hisses, all narrow eyes and steely, cold anger.

“Tell me what?” Naruto asks, but his voice trembles.

“Naruto,” Kakashi continues gravely, still holding his gaze, “Jiraiya is dead.”

For a long moment, the whole world stands still. Naruto can’t seem to breathe. There’s no way. Jiraiya was like a father to him. There’s no way. He starts to shake his head and takes a step back, but Sasuke’s comforting grip on his hand tightens and brings him back to center.

“No,” Naruto says firmly. “He’s… He would’ve told me he was leaving. He would have said goodbye.”

He’s shaking now, but there’s nowhere to sit down. Suddenly how he was acting the day Naruto went to see him makes more sense. His odd melancholy, the strange sense of mortality surrounding him. He was going to. Knowing him, the old man probably didn’t want to ruin Naruto’s good mood.

Stubborn pervy sage.

“Damn it,” Naruto chokes. He looks to his right.

Sasuke stares back at him calmly, offering his silent support.

It’s too much.

When the wave hits, Naruto is glad he’s not alone.


	12. How to Fall in Love (by Sasuke Uchiha)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter, but yay!!

The Uchiha brat really isn’t all that bad. Naruto is softer around him, less like wildfire and more like a hearth. He speaks softer, smiles more, and acts gentler with him. But the Uchiha is like ice and lightning, cold and unforgiving. He doesn’t speak often but when he does, it’s either a witty remark accompanied by a cool smirk or a firm warning.

However, the few times Tsubaki has seen the Uchiha’s composure slip around his ray of sunshine, it’s been a genuine smile, an affectionate insult, or a low comment that makes Naruto turn red. And the few times Naruto has lapsed into one of his moments of sadness that became so familiar for him among the foxes, Sasuke joins him and stays with him even after he smiles again.

Tsubaki can’t quite find it in himself to dislike someone Naruto would be so lost without.

The three of them travel together for a year. They save small villages from bandits, overthrow corrupt governments in far-off lands, and discover an uninhabited island after a night spent sailing high above the black seas.

The boys spent a long, slow night together in a cave on that island. Tsubaki pretended not to notice and went off for a hunt instead.

He couldn’t help but notice the loving looks the two of them kept casting at each other in the morning, or their intertwined fingers with new little leather bands tied on them.

Wait.

“You’re married?!” Tsubaki exclaims when he sees them.

Sasuke grimaces, but Naruto just throws his head back and laughs.

“Tsubaki, if we ever do get married, I swear you’ll be my best man,” Naruto promises with a warm twinkle in his eye. He holds up his and Sasuke’s intertwined hands to explain, “These are promise rings. They’re like the human equivalent of… well, almost a summoning contract. Except they’re not meant for summoning, just like… to bind two people together, ya know?”

Tsubaki shakes his head in defeat at humans and their ridiculously complicated and entirely unnecessary actions as he curls back up against the trunk of a tree.

“You humans never make any sense,” he grumbles, which only earns him another laugh from Naruto.

That was when the first explosion rocked the ground beneath their feet and Naruto got the same expression he did right before they raced off toward Suna.

“Sasuke…”

“I know.” Sasuke turns back toward Tsubaki and asks, with a note of urgency he’s never used, “How fast can you take us back to the mainland?”

Tsubaki rises in one smooth motion, stretches his back, and growls, “Hold on tight and we’ll find out.”

~+~+~+~

The blow is devastating. Two whole villages wiped out in an instant, saved only by the evacuation calls issued before. An emergency kage summit is called to unify the five nations against the great threat that has emerged, and all anyone seems to know is that Akatsuki is behind it. They don’t know who’s in charge of the group, nor how to stop it. Their only leads are Naruto and Killer Bee, two of the three last surviving jinchuuriki and the only ones who have mastered telepathic communication with the other tailed beasts, and the former has been off-grid for a while now.

When a sonic boom echoes through the air moments before a massive silver fox slams into the ground outside the summit building, the five kage realise that Konoha’s jinchuuriki might not be so hard to reach after all.

Naruto rolls off the fox’s shoulders into the snow, dressed in black but glowing like the sun. A dark-haired man in a royal blue yukata follows Naruto Uzumaki inside slowly, arms crossed over his chest. They step into the conference room with their chins held high, expectant and grave.

“We’re here to help,” Naruto explains gently.

The five kage look at each other, then at the two of them, reminded briefly of two ancient living legends who led to the creation of the first shionib village and caused its very destruction.

Tsunade could never be more grateful these brats are on their side.

Once the situation is explained to them, Naruto leans forward over the map laid out in the center and begins pointing out hideouts and hotspots they’ve found along their way. They’ve been tracking Akatsuki, he explains, and he knows who is behind it.

Sasuke steps forward then, and draws a cracked orange mask from the fold of his robes. He tells them the tale of a Konoha genin lost in a war, a descendant of the Uchiha clan long presumed dead. He explains how an old legend kept him alive with his rival’s cells, and how Obito Uchiha will stop at nothing to resurrect Madara and enslave the world. They’ve found artifacts, he said, of an ancient goddess named Kaguya who planned to set the world in an eternal slumber.

If Madara or Kaguya are brought back from the dead, it will all be over.

The shinobi alliance army comes together quickly. Gaara is appointed Commander in Chief, as one of the kage and a jinchuuriki himself. Naruto asks to aid him, much to Konoha’s excitement. Sasuke becomes head of the reconnaissance unit, much to his old team’s pride.

The war lasts four months. Even with the kyuubi, even with Sasuke and Itachi, even with Gaara and Killer Bee and the thousands of skilled shinobi who fight and give their lives, it lasts four months. Kabito, Orochimaru’s evident successor, caused them more trouble than Obito and Akatsuki combined, between his reanimation technique and the fact that nobody knew he existed.

But when Obito is finally killed, when Madara and Kaguya are dead, when the war is over and the dust has settled, the villages begin to rebuild again. Tsunade decides to offer the hat to a promising young jounin with a reckless attitude like his mother and the bright presence of his father, but he passes it up in favor of recommending his best friend, one of Konoha’s most loyal citizens despite how it treated his family, and someone who lost everything and decided to rebuild instead of destroy.

Sasuke Uchiha becomes the sixth hokage of Konoha, and moves in with the only family he’s ever known: an older brother sadistic in his training, a brilliant pink-haired harpy girl confident in her own power, and a blue-eyed sun, the one man who could turn any enemy into a friend and irrefutably the most powerful shinobi in the world; stronger than Itachi himself.

Now he sits beneath the stars on the roof of their new house, watching the stars with his lover and their fingers intertwined. Their weapons are put away and their cloaks hung against the wall, Sasuke’s hat with it. The snores of their teammate reaches them faintly from the bedroom down the hall and Itachi is working on documents downstairs. The village is quiet, and for the first time in a while, everything feels peaceful.

“Sasuke,” Naruto asks softly, turning his head towards him without looking away from the stars.

“Hm?” He replies with a glance, raising his eyebrows.

“Do you think we’ll ever get married?” Naruto turns then to hold his gaze, uncertain.

Sasuke smiles. He pulls Naruto’s hand closer to trace the outline the sun carved into his palm to match the moon in Sasuke’s. There’s no mistaking their bond, now.

“Naruto, I would give anything to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Naruto perks up like a dog who’s heard the word walk and asks, “Is that a yes?”

Sasuke rolls his eyes, but a fond smile plays on his lips. “Usuratonkachi. Yes.”

Naruto brightens, and Sasuke’s chest tightens right before his lover pulls him in for a long, sweet kiss. Sasuke melts into it with the thought, _I’m in love with an idiot, and I wouldn’t have it any other way._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much and I really hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did. Give me some kudos if you liked this so I can know what my readers enjoy. Thank you!


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